


Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

by powerbottoms



Category: Glee
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, M/M, Survival, Zombie, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerbottoms/pseuds/powerbottoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine's just another zombie hunter trying to make it in a post-apocalyptic world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the hardest thing I have ever written in my entire life. First of all, I donʼt know anything about zombies…like anything so I had to do a lot of research. It's mostly for my best friend Niroja, I wrote it for her birthday since she loves zombies hardcore.  
> At first I wanted the story to be inspired by The Walking Dead, but the more I looked into that the more I kind of secretly hated it. So I decided to kind of work on my own verse.  
> Also, there is violence in this story and lots of death because that's what happens in a zombie apocalypse. It's in almost every chapter so if anything in the warning is a trigger for you, please don't read. I want you guys to be happy!  
> MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR THANK YOUs to the gorgeous and amazingly talented Jenni aka t_megagirl whose graphics I have been a fan of since forever. I gasped when she claimed my story. Her art is gonna be scattered throughout the fic! :)
> 
> Of course, so much thanks to my beta, Alison aka klainebowsandbutterflies (over on tumblr!) who gave me perfect suggestions and fixed my grammar and took on a zombie story even though she had no idea about zombies. It's because of these two amazing ladies that this story got finished.

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/437)

  
Above all things, he was a hunter. Before The Change he had been strong, but hesitant. Something had happened to him in the months since the world had ended. He no longer cringed as he severed heads of the creatures that had destroyed his life; he relished the feeling of flesh and bone as his swords cut through the necks of vermin. 

         He had lost everything - his family, his home. He travelled alone. He feared nothing. He sought them out, and as they swarmed him, mouths foaming for human flesh, he killed them.

         He wanted to bring the world to its knees.

         His mission, since the beginning, had been to reach the area beyond the quarantine. As The Change claimed more and more, the quarantine grew.  Its borders were so large he had no idea where to go anymore. He kept his map with him at all times. He was miles from his home, a shell of the living city it once was, now overrun with animals that feasted on living flesh.

         He took the swords from a man he found lying dead by the side of the road. He did not know who the dead man was or where the swords had come from, but he knew that they were a sign. _Kill them all. Don't stop until they're all dead._ He walked and walked until he did not care what day, what month, what year it was. He walked until his past was far behind him.

                   He had been staying in the farm country for a while. Walkers had not been able to find him here. There was an orchard he ate from and a stream from which he boiled drinking water. He slept in trees because they could not climb. He travelled through a hilly place, walking during the day and setting up camp at dusk. The Walkers did not sleep. He was aware of them at all times.

         He was walking on a golf course, relishing the sun, letting it warm his skin. He remembered it was his birthday as he heard screams coming from the other side of a hill. He was ruthless and he fought for himself, but he knew that if others were Changed he would only have more creatures to slay.

         Over the hill, in a bunker, were a girl about his age, and a boy who looked older. There were three Walkers, and they were clearly overmatched. The boy had a lead pipe and was whacking them while the girl fumbled with a double barrel shotgun.

         He stood at the top of the bunker for a moment, deciding what to do. The terror in the boy's eyes was clear. These two were not experienced killers like he was.

         " _I'M GOING TO HIT YOU IF YOU DON'T MOVE!"_ the girl screamed, aiming her gun. Her voice was shrill and pierced the calm afternoon air.

         From the top of the bunker he leapt, pulling his swords from where they were sheathed on his back as he flew through the air. He landed on a Walker, sinking his swords into its neck, leaping off and turning quickly to strike another. He kicked it down and turned to the last one. With a smirk on his face he lifted the sword in his right hand and stabbed it through the Walker's head, killing it instantly. With the three monsters dead at his feet, he turned to face his companions.

         The girl had not put the shotgun down; her blonde hair billowed in the wind as she pointed the gun, cocked and ready to fire. For the first time in a long time, Blaine laughed and stuck out his hand.

         "I'm Blaine," he said. "You should put the gun down. I just saved your lives."

         The girl glanced at the boy and lowered her gun. "I'm Quinn." She shook Blaine's hand. "And that's Puck."

 

* * *

         Quinn and Puck were actors. They had met during a theatre festival three years before The Change and hadn't left each other's sides since. She would take a bullet for him, and knew he would do the same. They were not hunters, they were survivors. When The Change came they had nothing but each other. At night, she liked to listen to his heartbeat. It was a reminder: _a-live, a-live_.

         They were damaged. She had tried to save her parents, tried to go back for them once The Change had hit. The virus reached them before she could. She couldn't shoot them, couldn't kill her own parents. He did it for her. They were linked from that moment on. "I will never leave you," he told her. They ran from The Change and desperately made art. They performed wherever they could. As the virus took over the city, they wrote about the death of the earth. They wrote about the death of each other.

         The virus came from zoos, from the water, it came from the establishment, the government. Some people got it and some people didn't - it spread like the viruses of the 1980s, through blood drives and one-night stands. People wore surgical masks on the subway, but it didn't help. The antibiotics and the vaccines stopped working. People died.  And then, strangely, they came back to life. They did not talk or think or breathe; they merely desired living flesh. The world ended.

         The Change caught up with them in a basement theatre. They were doing performance art about the virus; lights flickered, projections displayed the hideous creatures they knew were just outside the doors. In the middle of a monologue in which Quinn was supposed to remove her clothes, someone coughed, sputtered and died. Quinn stopped. She looked at Puck. His eyes told her what she felt in her gut: _the show must go on._ She continued her monologue as she watched the audience Change. It was a moment she could not forget, a moment she saw every time she closed her eyes.

         The most vivid memory was a man who looked like her father Changing. One moment his eyes were calm and full of interest in her words. The next, they rolled back in his head his breathing shallow, mouth lax. She saw her family before her eyes, dead and unfeeling. She saw their heads pierced by bullets. She closed her eyes and readied herself for the inevitable bite, but instead felt a warm hand in her own.

         "Not today," he told her. And they ran. They ran, still in their costumes, until it hurt. Her feet were bare because she could not run in five inch heels. They walked for days. They walked so much that she threw up and fainted somewhere outside the city, exhausted and spent. He carried her. When Quinn woke up she was still weak, but carried him as best she could. They found a gun, killed Walkers, skinned squirrels. They clung to each other, the only thing standing after the world had tumbled down.

         Blaine was silent as Puck told him their story. Quinn held his hand and stared at the ground, her face showing no emotion. They had decided to travel together to reach the area beyond the quarantine, to reach freedom and a new life.

         Blaine was hesitant towards them. He didn't know much about them, but he knew staying with them was better than traveling alone. Their gun was useful, and Quinn was a good shot. Since encountering the creatures in the bunker, they had seen no Walkers. They traveled even at night, stopping every two days to climb trees and sleep. They were mostly silent, and Blaine liked that. They were bound by an insatiable desire to _live_.

         There was no food or water; there hadn't been for days. Standing by a highway, smacking her lips, Quinn whispered: "We need to find a convenience store so we can get food, or we're going to die." They followed the signs along the highway that lead to a rest stop, the sun beating over them.

         Blaine had a headache, he couldn't see straight, his vision hazy. Days without water had brought him to the brink of exhaustion. They barely spoke to each other because it took too much energy. And then, it emerged like an oasis in the desert: a truck stop. Abandoned cars littered the parking lot, left by those who thought they could outrun The Change.

         They stopped where the concrete of the parking lot met the grass just off the highway and stared at the building.

         "It has to be crawling with them," Puck murmured.

         "How many shells are left in the gun?" Blaine asked.

         "Enough," Quinn replied.

         Puck's grip tightened around his pipe. "Should we go for it?"

         "If  there's too many, we can't stay. We have to get out," Blaine said, meeting Puck's eyes.

         "How many is too many?" Quinn wondered aloud.

         "Fifty?"

         "Twenty," Blaine answered. "The most I've ever killed at one time is five."

         "So you're suggesting five for each of us?"

         "Something like that," he sighed.

         "I have more than five shells, so if things get too hard I can help both you guys," Quinn said, beginning to walk forward, Blaine close behind.

         "Wait!" Puck cried, stopping both of them. "What happens if…what happens if one of us doesn't make it? There's never been this many before. If one of us gets bit -"

         Quinn took Blaine's hand and reached for Puck's. Puck stepped forward and met their hands.

         She looked into Blaine's eyes. "If something happens, the others keep going. If something happens, don't stay, don't fight. Kill them. Kill them, because dying is better then living like _that_ for one minute." She turned to Puck. "Don't cry. Just keep going."

         "Not today," he told her, and Blaine felt as though he had walked in on some private moment. They squeezed each other's hands, and Quinn pulled them into a tight hug. "I'm glad to have known you," she whispered in Blaine's ear.

         They broke apart, and Blaine said, "No one is going to get bit. We kill them, get food and water, maybe sleep there if we can burn their bodies…and then we keep going."

         They stared at each other for a moment, and then broke out into a run. Puck reached the door first, yanked it open and then staggered back.

         "There's too many!" he cried, but Quinn pushed past him with her gun and began to fire. Blaine counted the bullets. _One, two, three, four…ten…fifteen_ …

         "NOW! GO!" Quinn screamed, bending over to pick up her empty shotgun shells.

         Blaine ran into the stop and saw them begin to swarm the moment they caught his scent. He counted quickly and saw that there were only ten Walkers left, the fifteen that Quinn had shot lay dead on the tile floor. Puck's fingers choked his pipe as he smashed the head of a vicious Walker wearing a pair of pajamas, its blood spattering on his face. Quinn had charged forward and was beating a female Walker with the butt of her gun.

         Blaine ran into the thick of the mob and sliced the heads of two Walkers quickly with his swords. A Walker grabbed him from behind, and he elbowed it in the mouth, turning to deliver a kick to its chest. Quinn saw the Walker struggling to get up and smashed its head with her gun.

         Blaine let out a cry as he slaughtered another pair of Walkers, then two more. He turned to see if there were any others, but Quinn and Puck just stood among the bodies, splattered with blood and panting.

         Blaine and Quinn made eye contact, and the blonde smiled. "Let's clean this place up," she said, and began dragging a Walker's carcass outside the truck stop. It took them two hours to drag all twenty-five Walkers to the middle of the parking lot and set them on fire. Quinn found some bleach in the janitor's closet and they mixed it with water from the taps to rinse their bodies with.

         They took the rest of the bleach solution and rinsed the interior of the truck stop from stem to stern. Quinn took it upon herself to sort through what food was there, disposing of anything rotten and adding it to the parking lot fire. It called attention to life, but Walkers feared the bright orange flames and the scent of burning bodies masked that of the living flesh close by.

         At nightfall, they gathered in a booth at the stop for the first real food any of them had had in months. Quinn and Puck got a grill at the McDonald's and scrounged together a dinner of hamburger patties, potato chips, peanuts, yogurt, and protein drinks from the convenience store in the southwest corner of the stop. They ate for two and a half hours. They locked the doors and barred the windows with what they could find.

         They took sweatpants and hoodies emblazoned with logos for tourists and wore them, they found car blankets and slept in booths, Quinn and Puck curled together so that she could hear his heartbeat. Blaine slept with his swords, thankful for once that he didn't have to be afraid of the morning.  
  
Chapter Art:  
  
  
  


  



	2. Chapter 2

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/648)

A week later over breakfast, Quinn said: "We should think about moving."

         Puck bit his lip and glanced at Blaine. Life at the stop had been comfortable, remaining static as they had left them vulnerable. No matter how long they kept the fire outside burning, they knew the Walkers would come. They always did.

         "We could hot wire one of the cars in the parking lot," Blaine suggested. "We could drive it to the safe area."

         "What if we run out of gas?" Puck asked.

         "There has to be gas stations around," Quinn said, gently touching his arm. "You've got nothing to worry about. This is our way out, towards the end of the quarantine. The car can hold tons of supplies."

         Puck looked her dead in the eye. "I'm tired of running," he whispered. Quinn just took his hand and faced Blaine. "Do you know how to hot wire a car?"

         Blaine blushed. "I don't. I was hoping we could figure it out?"

         "I know how," Puck confessed. "I've done it once or twice."

         Quinn chuckled, and again Blaine felt as though he had invaded some private moment. "Let's pack as many supplies we can into the car, wash it out with bleach and tomorrow we'll get it going and get out of here."

         "Sounds like a plan," Blaine agreed.

         They spent the rest of the day quietly going through as many supplies as they could, sorting what to keep and what to leave. Quinn grilled McDonald's hamburgers and packed them for the journey. Sometime in the afternoon, Quinn started singing an old song from a movie Blaine remembered from his childhood. Puck joined in, singing the male parts, harmonizing with her. Blaine wished he knew the words.

         For the first time since The Change, he felt a crushing loneliness. He envied Quinn and Puck, whatever their connection was. He knew that although the three of them looked out for each other, Quinn and Puck shared a connection he could only dream of having. He wished he let himself feel more, wished it was easier for him to let others in. But he was afraid. He didn't want to lose them, he didn't want to watch their eyes change from hazel to the sickening yellow of the Walkers.

         His family had caught the virus, ironically, from the vaccination. Somewhere along the line clean needles had become scarce, families were forced to share them when they received the vaccine. Blaine had refused it; he wanted to fight the virus on his own. His family's needle was not sterile. Three days later Blaine woke up to find his family dead. It was at that moment that he shut down. He could not kill them, instead he quickly packed his bags and ran. He shook the image of the eyes of his parents, once brown and friendly, now that awful color.

         Sitting and listening to Quinn and Puck sing, he began to cry. He remembered what it was like to sing with his brother, how it felt to be on stage, how a melody felt in his throat. Once the wall had been broken down he couldn't get it back up. Quinn and Puck didn't notice, continuing to harmonize and dance with each other across the tiled floor, smiling and laughing. Blaine was so caught up in his own tears that he didn't notice Quinn's hand on his shoulder and Puck's arms around him.

         "Don't cry," they whispered.

         "I'm alone," he told them. "I'm all alone."

         They did not know what to do so they held him, and even when he stopped crying they held on tight.

***

         At dawn they moved their supplies out of the stop, and surveyed the parking lot.

         "We need to find a car manufactured before 2000," Puck told the Quinn and Blaine. "It'll be easier to get it started."

         Blaine scanned the parked cars, his eyes settling on a hideous red van. "What about that one?" he asked, pointing.

         Puck grinned. "A 1994 Ford Aerostar. Perfect."

         The van was boxy and huge. It was a bright blood-red color with scratches along the doors that could only have come from Walkers. It was thankfully unlocked, and they wasted no time loading their supplies. When they were sure everything was secure and that they hadn’t forgotten anything, Puck pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and used a screwdriver they'd found in the janitor's closet to start taking apart the steering column, revealing the ignition cylinder and the wires running to it. He used the scissors to cut and strip wires and reattach them in a way that was so simple, Blaine suspected if he'd had enough time he could have figured out how to hot wire the car himself. The car started and Puck fiddled with electrical tape, covering the exposed ends of the wires.

         Smiling from ear to ear, Puck sat up in the drivers seat. Quinn announced she was going to sleep in the back, so Blaine slipped into the passenger's seat and they drove away from their sanctuary.

         Three hours later, Quinn was still passed out and Puck was driving nearly one hundred miles per hour along the abandoned highway. The silence between them was comfortable, but Blaine had so many questions for him. He didn't know Puck, not really. Blaine turned his head and studied him for a moment.

         "What?" Puck asked, aware of Blaine's gaze.

         "Trying to figure you out, I guess," he answered.

         Puck laughed. "What do you want to know?"

         "Do you love her?"

         He sighed, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. "That's a complicated question."

         "What's so complicated about it?"

         "It's beyond love I think," he explained. "I can't live without her, I _need_ her. We need each other to survive."

         "Oh," Blaine said softly.

         "I don't know what it is, to be completely honest," Puck told him. "I've never kissed her in my life, but I know that if anything happened to her I couldn't go on. We're completely dependent on each other. Where I go, she goes."

         "Is that a burden?" Blaine wondered out loud.

         "Kind of," Puck confessed. "We talked about it a lot when it was just the two of us. A romantic relationship is too complicated at the moment, but we're partners for life."

         Blaine was silent. "It's strange," he continued. "I didn't think I would ever find someone like her, but I have. I live one day at a time, but I know that she'll be with me tomorrow. It makes it easier to breathe."

         "I've only heard of stuff like that in books," Blaine confessed, turning to look at Puck.

         "I don't know what to think anymore. We belong to each other. It's that simple."

         "You're lucky to have each other," Blaine murmured, and turned away from him.

         Blaine felt his hand on his own. "Hey," Puck said softly. "We're lucky to have you, too. You're amazing. All three of us belong to each other."

         Blaine had to bite back tears. "Thank you," he said.

         They were silent until Quinn woke up about an hour later.

         "I have to pee," she announced, sitting up groggily. "Can we even stop the car?"

         "Yes we can," Puck answered, pulling over to the highway shoulder. "We just can't turn it off."

         "Ok perfect," Quinn purred, opening the door of the van to slip out. She grabbed the lead pipe from the back of the van, and headed towards a group of trees a few yards from the van.

         Four minutes later, Puck glanced over at Blaine. "I'm nervous," he confessed. "She should be back by now."

         And then they heard the scream. Puck cut the power on the van, threw himself out the driver's side and bolted to the group of trees. Blaine had never seen anyone run so fast in his life, and he quickly followed, van be damned. He drew his swords as he ran, adrenaline fuelling his legs.

         When he reached the patch of trees, it was the worst thing he could have imagined. Quinn was leaning against a tree, her breathing shallow. She was soaked in blood, her eyes rolling back in her lead as she put all her weight on the birch behind her. Puck stood over a Walker, beating it with the lead pipe. As the blood that had been rushing passed Blaine's ears cleared, he heard the sounds of Puck beating the Walker's head again and again. It was clearly dead, and had been for a while, but he didn't stop. Blaine registered the sounds of a strangled cry, and he realized it was coming from Puck. He stepped towards his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn't stop, he was like a machine hitting the creature harder each time, splattering its blood all over himself.

         "Puck…" Blaine said softly, trying to reach him. He wasn't listening, he was like an animal. " _Puck_ ," he tried again, raising his voice. Nothing.

         "Puck!" Blaine screamed, yanking him back from the creature. As Blaine pulled him he released a strangled cry, his voice thick with tears.

         "Puck," a voice behind Blaine said. They turned to see Quinn clutching her side and stumbling forward to touch Puck.

         " _Don't touch me!_ " he sobbed. "I'm covered in its blood don't _touch me!_ "

         Blaine glanced at Quinn, and their eyes met for a moment. Quinn's hazel eyes, normally vibrant and alive were dull and tired. She winced as she took in a deep breath.

         "We need to go back to the van, we need to rinse Puck in bleach and someone has to do first aid on me because it has ripped open my side and I am literally holding what I believe is my ascending colon right now in my hands," Quinn instructed.

         "Are you infect-"

         "I don't know if I'm  infected," Quinn said, cutting off Blaine. "I don't _know_. The virus is transmitted via bodily fluids, and none of its blood got in me or on me. Please get Puck back to the van and get him to rinse off I need to throw up."

         Blaine turned and steered Puck away from Quinn as she retched among the trees. "You have to stop crying," Blaine murmured to him. "She needs you. _I_ need you."

         Puck tried to slow his sobbing, to keep from hyperventilating. By the time they had made the short walk to the van, his breathing had slowed considerably. "There," Blaine said softly, rubbing his back. "You're OK."

         "Quinn - " he choked out.

         Blaine fished around in the back of the van for the bleach and a clean pair of pants and a tourist sweatshirt for Puck.

         "Strip down," he instructed. "We're burning all your clothes."

         Puck did as he was told and Blaine wet a sponge with the bleach and rubbed him down. He felt Puck's body relax under his touch, and he felt good for a moment.

         Of course Blaine was gay, he had known that all his life. He had struggled with it growing up, living in the shadow of his brother, and feeling awkward at family gatherings or in the locker room. He had never felt accepted, his sexuality lingered over him. It followed him from one school to another, from an alley behind his high school to the commons of a private academy. Puck was good looking, but he wasn't Blaine's type. Their will to survive had made their sexuality irrelevant. For the first time in his life, Blaine felt comfortable being gay. It wasn’t something that was punishable, it wasn’t something that he should be ashamed of. Puck trusted Blaine to take care of him, just as Blaine trusted Quinn and Puck to do the same for him. He hadn't come out to them yet, he didn't know how to divulge something so personal about himself without thinking of his past.

         It was nice to be taking care of someone else. It felt natural to Blaine, and as he worked the sponge along Puck's body he realized how much he had missed caring for other people. He had spent so long traveling alone that he had forgotten the feeling of family he'd had in his old life. He felt it now, caring for Puck and calming him down. Quinn was right, they were a family.

         Finishing rubbing down his calves, Blaine stood up and handed Puck the clean clothes. "Get dressed," Blaine instructed him. "I'm going to get Quinn. By the time we get back, you need to have the first aid kit out and ready to go."

         Puck nodded, and Blaine jogged back to the trees, where Quinn had managed to remain standing. The clearing smelled disgusting, and Blaine had to keep from gagging as he reached his hand out to Quinn. Quinn took Blaine's hand, her knuckles white, and they stumbled back to the van.

         Puck was ready, he had donned a facemask and a pair of latex gloves. Blaine stepped away, stripped down and treated himself in bleach as Puck tended to Quinn's wound.

         For a moment, Blaine turned to see what kind of progress Puck was making and he nearly threw up. Quinn hadn't been joking when she said she was holding her intestines. Quinn's intestines spilled out her sides, slimy and slick with blood. Blaine had never seen anything like it in his life before. Quinn's insides looked nothing like the fetal pig he had dissected in school - it was like a grisly horror movie he couldn't look away from.

         "She needs stitches," Puck announced.

         "We don't have a needle and thread," Blaine replied, not turning to look.

         "Dental floss," Quinn said.

         "What about a needle?" Blaine asked.

         "Are there any cactuses around?" Quinn asked.

         Puck barked out a strange laugh.

         "You don't need to laugh at me," Quinn said tensely. "We need some kind of curved needle, do we not have a fishing hook? I thought we took fishing hooks from the truck stop."

         Blaine walked and looked through the boxes in the back of the van. "You're right," he said. "And there's fishing line too, even better than dental floss."

         "OK," Quinn said, taking a deep breath. "You have to sterilize the hook and the line. Boil them or something, I think there's iodine in this first aid kit. And then someone has to stitch me up."

         "Did you clean around her cut?" Blaine asked Puck.

         "Working on it now, can you handle the line and the hook?" Puck asked.

         "Yes," Blaine answered, taking a plastic cup from the back of the van and pouring iodine in it. He soaked the line and a hook, watching Puck gingerly clean Quinn's wound.

         Tears were pouring down her face, Blaine noticed.  "You have to file the barb off the hook," Quinn said as Puck continued to dab at her wound. Blaine got to work on filing down the barb when something dawned on him. "Quinn if we use this to stitch you up it's going to make holes in your sides. The eye is huge."

         Quinn laughed darkly. "It's better than nothing," she said. "I'm probably already infected."

         Puck looked up at her and Blaine could see the hurt in his eyes. "Stop talking like that."

         "What if it's only a matter of time?" Quinn asked, her voice rising. "I could make you both sick. This can't be the end for you, not because of me. It's better if you kill me."

         Puck gripped tight on Quinn's waist as he continued to treat her cut. "Not. Today." he said firmly, and Blaine felt like crying. "I'm serious," Quinn said, her voice thick with tears. "Please just kill me it hurts too much."

         Blaine glanced at Puck to see if he agreed with Quinn and Puck's eyes caught Blaine off guard. They weren't full of tears as Blaine's were, but they were brimming with emotion. It was as if he had found a way to contain all his feelings in that one spot. Blaine stepped forward with the sterilized hook and fishing line.

         "Let's get you stitched up," he said.

***

         When he looked back on it later, Blaine didn't understand how he hadn't managed to puke. He had never seen so much blood in his life. He had never heard someone scream themselves hoarse, he had never seen the inside of someone's body cavity before. Driving the van down the highway his head was still spinning. He had thought killing Walkers made him strong, he thought that he was a hunter, that he could handle blood and gore, but after _reality_ had caught up with him he wasn't sure if he wanted to watch another Walker's head tumble to the ground again.

         Quinn was spread out in the back seat, her head in Puck's lap. He had been silent since the three of them had piled back in the van. Blaine had slipped into the driver's seat and started the car, Puck hadn't protested.

         They had been driving for about three hours when Blaine saw the boy hiking down the road. Blaine slowed down to get a good look, wondering if he was a Walker.

         "What is that?" Puck asked.

         "I don't know, I think it's a person…a boy," Blaine answered. "Does he look like a Walker to you?"

         Puck rolled down his window to get a clearer view. "No, he doesn't look like a Walker."

         "Should we stop?" Blaine glanced into the rearview mirror to meet his gaze. He just shrugged.

         Blaine pulled over the van as best he could ahead of the boy. He cut the power and got out of the car. He turned to look at the boy and his breath caught in his throat. He was _beautiful_. His hair was a chocolate brown, swept up off his forehead. He was wearing a white Henley and black jeans that were tight on his skin, a satchel slung over his broad shoulders. His combat boots were practical but effortlessly stylish. The boy looked like he had stepped out of the Italian _Vogue_ _Apocalypse Now_ Issue. An issue that Blaine remembered pouring over countless times as he watched the world end. It was the boy's eyes that made Blaine's heart rate accelerate. They were impossibly blue, with flecks of green and gold. They looked like exploding supernovas. After months of staring at death, Blaine found life in this boy's eyes. The boy leaned against the side of the van, smiling at Blaine.

         "Hi," he said. His voice was soft and feather light.

         Blaine was silent. He only stared.

         "Excuse me?"

         "Oh, sorry, um…hi," he replied, snapping out of his reverie.

         "Thanks for stopping," the boy smiled. "I've been walking for hours."

         "What happened to you?" Blaine asked.

         He sighed. "I went to get water and my group was attacked by Walkers. I just ran away and kept to the highway in case anyone came along."

         "You mean there's a pack of Walkers in the area?" Blaine asked sharply.

         "They're far behind," he told Blaine. "But I wouldn't stay here for too long."

         "Have you touched them?"

         "No. I saw them attacking my friends from a distance."

         "I'm serious," Blaine told him. He looked the boy dead in the eye, trying not to get caught up in the warmth of his gaze. "My friend was attacked, we're not sure if she's been exposed but she's in real trouble so we don't want you infecting her with anything."

         "I swear, I'm clean," he told Blaine, returning the intense stare.

         "I'm Blaine," he said finally, extending his hand.

         The boy grinned. "Kurt." Their hands touched, and Blaine felt comfortable touching someone else. He missed touching.

         "You can hop in the passenger's side," he told Kurt. "Quinn and Puck are in the back."  
  
  
Chapter Art:  
  
[](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/5688)  
[](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/4054)


	3. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/860)

His name was Kurt. His voice sounded like velvet. His hands were soft and elegant. His lips were full and pink, and Blaine liked that. He wore a lot of bracelets, and Blaine asked him about one - a braided black leather strap.

         "One day I'll tell you about it," he smiled mysteriously.

         They didn't talk much as Blaine drove along the winding highway.

         "Do you know where the quarantine ends?" Kurt asked Blaine.

         Blaine sighed. "I have a good idea, but I haven't seen a news report in months. We only know where it ended three months ago. It might be bigger now…there might not be a quarantine at all."

         "One from my group, he was a doctor. He said it wasn't much farther from here."

         "Really?" Puck asked from the backseat.

         "According to him, yeah," Kurt said, turning to look at Puck.

         "I have to throw up," Quinn announced, and Blaine pulled over. Quinn opened the side door of the van and heaved out onto the highway.

         "She hasn't eaten anything, I don't know why this is happening," Puck mumbled.

         Kurt pulled a pamphlet from his satchel with the heading: _ARE YOU OR YOUR COMPANIONS INFECTED?_ in bright red. He scanned it for a moment and then announced, "This doesn't say anything about vomiting."

         "She had her side torn up by a Walker," Blaine explained.

         Kurt went back to the pamphlet. "The World Health Organization is positive that unless her blood was in contact with the Walker's blood or semen, she's fine."

         "How old is the pamphlet?" Puck asked.

         "Three months," Kurt replied.

         Puck sighed and helped Quinn back into the van, lying her head down in his lap again. "Three months ago no one was admitting that people were turning into zombies," Puck said bitterly. "That pamphlet is useless. Half the WHO has probably turned by now."

         Blaine pulled away and they drove in silence for a while. Staring out at the road, his hands at ten and two, Blaine tried to imagine where they would be tomorrow, and the day after, and the month after that. He couldn't. He had never been this unsure of anything in his life. He felt like the future was going to swallow him whole, it felt like a black hole. Every choice he made sucked him closer towards the event horizon, towards the hole. He chewed on his lip and blankly stared at the stretch of road before him.

         "Penny for your thoughts," Kurt asked. Blaine turned to look at him and Kurt smiled at him coyly.

         "Nothing," he replied. "Just wondering what's going to happen…if we'll reach the quarantine's border."

         Kurt sighed. "I don't know, honestly. Lately I've just been trying to live day to day…and even that can be hard, you know?"

         Blaine's eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror where he spied Puck and Quinn asleep. "Before I met them, I traveled alone. I didn't think about anything. It's almost a relief to have them here, to have people to consider other than myself. Working alone is exhausting."

         "That's interesting for you to say," Kurt mused. "I almost like being alone better. I can think clearly, you know? I know what I want, I don't have to consider anyone else."

         "Something in me just wants to be with other people," Blaine countered. "My family - " he stopped himself before he could reveal any more. He wasn't sure he wanted to get this personal, this fast. Kurt had an energy about him that Quinn and Puck didn't. Blaine felt almost like Kurt held onto his every word, which was strange to Blaine. Surely nothing he said could be that important.

         "Your family…?" he asked.

         "Never mind," Blaine said. Kurt didn't press him further, he merely turned to face the road. They slipped into a comfortable silence.

***

         Blaine had been driving for ten hours when he spotted the first one. Kurt had nodded off an hour before, with the promise to take over the driving after he woke up. Quinn hadn't moved from her place in the backseat, still resting in Puck's lap. Puck faded in and out of consciousness, stroking Quinn's hair. When Blaine saw it, It was walking towards the car, dragging its legs like the pathetic vermin it was. He felt a surge of hatred for the creature. If he had been alone he would have killed it immediately.

         Before its Change the Walker had been a man, a little heavy, in a plaid shirt and brown pants. Now, most of its left cheek was missing, its teeth exposed. As Blaine sped up to pass him he checked the rearview and saw that the back of its skull was gone, leaving his brain grey and exposed. He gagged and hit the gas, putting the horrifying image behind them. Kurt jerked awake with the car.

         "Hey, what's going on?" he asked.

         "There was a Walker back there," Blaine told him. "I wanted to get past it."

         And then the car sputtered and died in the middle of the highway.

         "What did you do?" Puck asked sharply.

         "Nothing!" Blaine answered honestly. "I've just been driving!"

         Puck swiftly moved Quinn's head from his lap and leaned between the passenger's and driver's seats. "No lights came on? The gas or the oil?" he asked.

         "No, no!" Blaine answered agitated. Anxiety was bubbling up inside of him. One Walker they could handle, but if there were more…their tiny car didn't stand a chance.     

         " _Fuck_." Quinn said from the back.

         "What?" Puck turned to face her.

         "I don't have nearly enough shotgun shells."          

         "Why do you need those?" Kurt asked.

         "Because if you look to your left there's about three Walkers coming towards the car. Could be more." Quinn threw herself into the trunk and began rummaging for supplies.

         "You shouldn't be moving around with your side like that," Blaine told her.

         "Well _you're_ not going to find the shotgun shells, and I would rather have my side all fucked up than be dead," Quinn snapped. "You should start sharpening your swords."

         Blaine looked anxiously out the window, his heart racing. They were sitting ducks. He didn't fear death and he didn't fear the creatures that were quickly approaching. But he knew he couldn't lose them. He couldn't lose Quinn or Puck. Or Kurt. Beautiful Kurt. Kurt felt like a door to Blaine, an open door that he could walk through if he chose to. The Walkers put everything in jeopardy. He had to fight.

         "I'm going out there," he announced. Puck turned to look at him from where he was fiddling with the car's power cables. "Are you going to be OK?" Puck asked.

         "I have to be," he replied, and stepped out of the car, unsheathing his swords.

         The Walkers were about fifteen feet away from him, and he ran towards them to close the gap. The night air was cold on his skin, and the wind bit his face. His legs burned with speed, his eyes were focused like lasers. He was a hunter. He was ready to kill. They had caught his scent. He slashed the first Walker across the chest with the sword in his right hand, as a second Walker grabbed his left arm. He turned and sliced the Walker's arm off, shielding his face from its blood. The second Walker staggered back and he took the opportunity to sever the head of the third Walker.

         "COME BACK!"

         He turned to see Quinn standing up through the sunroof of the van, gun cocked and ready. Blaine turned and ran, moments later he heard two shots and the sputtering breath of the Walkers. He reached the van in record time, throwing open the trunk and grabbing the bleach.

         " _Quickly, quickly,_ " he heard Quinn urging him. "I see more!"

         "Should I go back out?" Blaine asked, rubbing the bleach on his arms and swords.

         "No. I have enough shells, but you need to get _in_ the car!"

         Blaine finished with the bleach, shut the back of the van and leaped into the passenger's side.

         "We're running out of shells," Kurt warned.

         Blaine counted the shots Quinn fired. _One, two, three, four_.

         "Quinn, how many are there?" Puck asked, touching the ignition wires together again and again.

         "I can handle it," Quinn replied, tense.

         "Quinn you need to tell me how many are out there _right now_." Puck let go of the wires and turned to stare at Quinn's legs standing in the backseat.

         Quinn shoved her head back in the car "How about you focus on your _fucking job_ , and I will kill the fucking Walkers?"

         "I think we're out of _gas_ , OK? We're not going anywhere, Miss 'I'll-Kill-the-Fucking-Walkers', so how 'bout you tell me how many fucking Walkers there are to kill?"

         They glared at each other for a moment, tension crackling like electricity between them. "They keep coming, I don't know how many there are," Quinn yielded to him.

         Puck turned and slammed his hands against the steering wheel. "FUCK!" Blaine and Kurt jumped. Quinn just stood up and started firing again.

         Blaine saw them falling apart before his eyes. This wasn't the end. Not now, when he had just gained back everything he had lost. Not when he could feel them around him. _Family_.

         "OK, here's what's going to happen - " Blaine started and Puck turned to glare at him. "Don't give me that fucking look, Puck. _Listen_. Quinn is going to stay in the van and she's going to keep firing until she's out of shells. Puck and I are going to go out there and start picking them off at close range. Kurt can you fight? Do you have a weapon?"

         "Use the axe," Quinn yelled from outside before firing the gun again.

         "Not like we need that for anything else," Puck shouted up at her, acid in his voice.

         "Go get the axe," Blaine instructed Kurt. "Make sure it's nice and sharp." Kurt hopped out of the car and began rummaging in the back. Blaine turned to look at Puck. "Are you going to be OK?"

         He sighed and held Blaine's gaze before saying, "Yeah, let's go."

         "I'm out," Quinn announced, dropping back into the van.

         "You're the most fucking aggravating person in the world, do you know that?" Puck said to her.

         "At least I'm getting shit done instead of whining about the car," Quinn spat back.

         Puck moved toward the back seat so aggressively that Blaine thought he was going to hit Quinn. Instead, he crushed his lips against hers. At first, Quinn looked surprised but she softened into the kiss, her hands reaching up to touch his face.

         Blaine coughed and they broke apart. "Go get them," Quinn said.

         Blaine bolted out the passenger's side and unsheathed his swords. He walked towards the front of the van to meet Puck who was rolling his lead pipe between his hands. Kurt shut the back and walked to stand with them. Puck had his eyes fixed on the van.

         "Come on," Blaine said gently. "Before they catch our scent."

         The three of them broke out running, into the night, into the fray. He could _smell_ them. It was a scent he couldn't describe. It smelled like garbage, and the sewers in the city. It smelled like the morning he had woken up to find his family dead in their beds. He stopped and staggered back, overcome with grief. They were _gone._

         Puck was racing ahead of him, pipe in hand, beating the heads of Walkers left and right. Blaine let out a strange moan, a ripping sound coming from his chest. _All dead, all gone_. Kurt ran back for him.

         "What are you doing?" he asked sharply. "Blaine?"

         Blaine sank to the grass, his shoulders shaking. "All gone, all gone…" he sobbed.

         "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" Puck screamed, running back to them.

         "I don't know, Blaine just collapsed."

         "Take him back to the car, give me your axe. I can hold them off."

         "Are you sure?"

         "Yes, _go!_ "

         Blaine felt arms around him, he felt safe. Kurt swung him over his shoulder and raced him back to the van.

        

         After that, everything was dark.

  



	4. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/1106)

He was outside in the sunlight. He was in a soft t-shirt that he loved, under a tree. The light was golden, it kissed the trees. He felt like he was in a painting. The grass was soft under his hands, he could smell flowers. The wind stirred his curls, carrying sweet scents. He felt alive. And then he saw the man.

         It was his brother. His back was to Blaine but he knew his brother anywhere. The way the back of his neck curved, the broadness of his shoulders. It was the boy Blaine had known his whole life, now a man. He smiled and called out his brother's name, "Cooper!"

         Cooper turned to face Blaine slowly and Blaine knew something was wrong. It was the way his leg dragged behind him, the way his shoulders were off balance. _It's not him_ , a voice told Blaine, but he refused to believe it. "I'm over here!" Blaine called.

         Cooper moved slowly across the grass, and Blaine saw a trail of blood in his wake.

         "Cooper what's wrong?" Blaine asked, but he knew the answer. When Cooper replied, it wasn't in words but a kind of grunt. The closer Cooper got, the clearer he became to Blaine. He was one of _them_ now, a creature. A Walker.

         "Cooper?" Blaine asked, his voice thick with tears. His eyes were not friendly and brown as Blaine remembered them; they were the sick green of the Walkers.          

         He reached out to touch Blaine's arm, grasping it firmly. "Cooper, _please_."

         He brought Blaine's arm to his mouth. Their eyes locked. "I love you," Blaine told him.

         He bit down on Blaine's arm and he screamed.

***

         There was light all around him when he came to. He kept his eyes shut because he didn't want the light. He wanted to go back under the tree. He wanted to go back to his brother. He was drenched in sweat, his mouth dry. He could hear voices.

         "Did they bite you?"

         "No, they didn't get me. It was close though. If Kurt hadn't come back I don't think I would have made it."

         "I guess we just have to wait for him to wake up."

         "The only way we can get the van moving is by siphoning gas from another car."

         "Didn't we take any gas from the truck stop?"

         "I don't know, that would make sense. Blaine's the only one who knows what all the stuff back here is."

         A pause. Quiet.

         "I'm glad you're OK."

         "Me too."

         "Means I get to do this."

         The sound of lips touching, his heart felt like it was going to burst.

         He opened his eyes so he wouldn't have to hear them loving each other any more.

         Puck was tucking a lock of Quinn's hair behind her ear, staring into her eyes and smiling at her. Blaine rolled over. His back hurt, his head was pounding. He was too exhausted to sleep. He vaguely noticed that he was in the back seat of the van, the side door open so his friends could keep an eye on him.

         "Hey," Quinn's voice said softly.

         "Glad to have you back," Puck murmured.

         Blaine turned to look at them and he remembered how he loved them. How they were his friends. How they were now his family. He sat up and extended his hands to them.

         "C'mere," Blaine said. They were in his arms, his face pressed into Puck's neck, Quinn's arms around his waist. He could smell them and they smelled like dirt and sweat and bleach, but they didn't smell like the creatures. The bleach burned his nose, but it smelled like home to him. He could hear their heartbeats, he could feel how warm they were. It felt good to be alive.

         "You're awake," he heard Kurt's voice say.

         Quinn and Puck pulled away and turned to face Kurt. He moved and sat next to Blaine in the van.

         "We're going to patrol the area, see if there are any Walkers around," Puck announced. He and Quinn grabbed the axe and the lead pipe and began walking toward the field off the highway.

         Kurt smiled at him, the sun shining through the car window and dancing on his face. "Your swords got lost out there, but I'm glad you're alright," he told Blaine.

         Blaine smiled back, his lips dry and tight. He was angry about his swords, but he was glad Kurt was glad. "Yeah I guess I am."

         "What happened?" Kurt asked softly. He reached for Blaine's hand and pulled it into his lap, tracing the lines on his palm and the veins on his wrists.

         Blaine sighed and stared at their hands.

         "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Kurt told him gently.

         "It was the smell."

         "They smelled pretty awful," Kurt agreed, turning Blaine's hand to hold it and stroke his knuckles.

         "The smell reminded me of my parents, my brother."

         "The virus got them?"

         "I woke up one morning and they were dead. They smelled just like that," he told Kurt. Blaine felt sticky and dirty and thirsty. Kurt was gentle with his hand and it felt good.

         "You were close to them?"

         "They were my _world_."

         "I'm sorry."

         "You don't need to be," Blaine bristled. He didn't want Kurt's pity, he didn't want Kurt to touch his hand because Kurt felt _sorry_ for him. Blaine didn't even know if he wanted Kurt to touch his hand at all. Blaine didn't pull away. Blaine let Kurt touch him.

         "I know how you feel," Kurt confessed. "My dad, my stepmom, my stepbrother…they were the same."

         Blaine turned to stare at Kurt's face. Kurt was looking at Blaine's hand, his face in profile. His eyes were blank.

         "I _told_ them the vaccine was trouble, I told them it wasn't a good idea to share the needle. We were sitting at dinner. One minute my dad was asking me to pass the potatoes and the next he was dead. They were all dead. I just grabbed what I could and ran out of there."

         "I'm sorry," Blaine told him because he didn't know what else to say.

         "Thank you."

         Blaine felt foolish for not accepting his apology. Kurt was gracious in a way Blaine was not, he understood people in a way Blaine had forgotten.

         "It's been so long since I've held someone's hand like this," he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

         Blaine was silent.

         "You're very handsome. I don't even know if you're gay," and here, a bitter laugh. "All these years spent in Ohio wondering if I’d ever find someone, and I don’t even know if you’re gay. I wish your heart didn't hurt so much. I wish there was something I could do for you. I know how you feel."

         Blaine was silent.

         "It's like there's been a hole punched in your chest. You wonder why you're alive and they're not. You wish you had gone with them to get that stupid vaccine. You wish there was something you could have done. CPR or something. You wish you could trade your life for theirs. You wish maybe one of them had made it, you don't care which one you just want to smell them again and feel how warm they are."

         Blaine was silent, tears had begun rolling down his face.

         Kurt squeezed Blaine's hand. "You don't understand why you survived and they didn't. You hate yourself but it's moments like _this_. Moments where I can hold your hand and feel the sun and understand and know that I am _alive_. Moments like this make me love being alive. Moments like this make me glad I got up from the table and ran away."

         They stared at each other for a moment.

         "We will survive," Kurt told Blaine. And Blaine knew he was telling the truth.

         Quinn and Puck came back from their patrol, with nothing to report. "Is there any gas?" Quinn asked.

         Blaine sighed and tried to remember. "We must have a can of it somewhere. I'm pretty sure I grabbed some."

         Blaine, Kurt and Puck set out unpacking the boxes in the back of the van from the truck stop, searching for a can of gas with Quinn on watch, her hands gripping the axe tightly. Puck was the furthest in the trunk, pushing boxes forward for Blaine and Kurt to look through.

         " _Shit!_ " Puck cried from the back of van.

         "What is it?" Kurt asked.

         "There's a can of gas back here, but it's _leaked._ Everywhere."

         "Are you fucking serious?" Blaine asked. His stomach felt like lead. The gas was dangerous and if anyone lit a match, they were as good as dead by the side of the road. Puck began using a knife to tear out the carpet in the van that was stained with gas. They would burn it with the Walkers from the night before later. They had managed to fight off the Walkers from the night before but Blaine feared more were on the way, following the scent of human flesh that was carried on the wind.

         "There's a car," Quinn said.

         " _Seriously?"_ came Puck's reply.

         "Flag it down!" Kurt told her.

        Quinn walked into the road and stepped into the path of the car. It was moving at a strange, slow pace, ignoring the dips and turns of the road. It drifted almost lazily along the highway.

         The car stopped.

         "Careful!" Puck warned.

         Quinn walked towards the driver's side of the car. It was an ancient teal Honda, the wheels looked worn from hours of driving, paint chipped from the doors. Scratches along the sides that looked to be from fingernails. Blaine's heart raced. He hated the unknown, the feeling of not being in control.

         "Hello?" he heard Quinn say. Quinn was standing at the driver's side of the Honda, tapping on the window.

         "It's like he's sleeping…" she said, turning to face the group. "It's like he's…oh my _god_ ," Quinn said, her face white.

         "What?" Puck asked. Quinn was silent. "You have to _tell_ us!" Puck screamed, bordering hysterical.

         "It's like he's _dead."_

 _"Shit_ ," Kurt said.

         "We have to burn the car," Puck announced. "Siphon the gas and burn the car."

         "We don't have much time before he turns," Kurt said. "It was in some of the pamphlets. I'm surprised he's not already."

         "He might not be infected," Puck pointed out. "He might just be dead."

         "How are we going to siphon the gas without a tube?" Blaine asked. They'd just dug through the back of the van in search of their useless gas can; he knew there wasn't a tube they could use to siphon gas.

         "Check the trunk of his car," Puck instructed. "That's our only shot. Otherwise we have to switch cars."

         "What do you want to do, pick the lock?" Quinn asked.

         "No, let's see if there's a trunk release in the glove box," Puck said, crawling out of the van.

         "We have to get him out of the car," Quinn said. "The guy…what if he turns while you're checking the glove box?"

         "Alright," Kurt said. "Blaine, grab some matches so we can get rid of this guy," he said, turning to face Blaine. Kurt took care to look Blaine straight in the eye, and he felt his breath hitch. Kurt trusted Blaine, he could tell from Kurt's eyes. They were kind and calm and patient. Blaine missed feeling like a human so much, to have Kurt look at him like this made him feel at home.

         "Sure thing," Blaine told him, not breaking eye contact. Kurt smiled, and Blaine felt his stomach clench. This felt good, a boy smiling at him. The sun on his face felt good. Blaine smiled back and turned to grab the matches. For a fleeting moment, it didn't matter that the matches were to burn a dead body, or that if they weren't careful the flames could also consume all their worldly belongings. It mattered that the weather was nice and a boy had smiled at him.

         Quinn and Kurt had slipped on rubber gloves to drag the man's body out of the car. He wasn't much older than they were, Blaine noticed. His face seemed peaceful, a pair of thick black glasses sat nicely on his round face. He was about six feet tall, dressed in a plaid shirt. He looked like a boy who could have been Cooper's friend. Blaine suddenly felt guilty about having to set him on fire.

         "Bring him over here," Blaine said, gesturing to the pile of last night's Walkers that Kurt and Puck had arranged in a pile to burn.

         Quinn was dragging the boy's right leg, and Kurt had the other. They had dragged him from the right lane to the left, approaching the pile just off the road. Blaine had just flicked the match on the boy, his plaid shirt catching fire, when Blaine noticed the boy's eyes snap open. They were the sickly green of his nightmares. They were the eyes of a Walker. Blaine screamed. "IT'S _AWAKE!"_

         Quinn dropped her leg and backed up, Blaine lunged back to the van to grab the axe. He gripped it securely and turned to face the flaming Walker, writhing on the asphalt in pain. Kurt had backed away from the Walker and was looking at Blaine.

         "Are you OK to kill it?" he asked, as Blaine raised the axe over his head, aiming for the Walker's neck.

         Blaine didn't answer, instead bringing the axe down on the Walker, sending its head flying across the highway back towards the Honda, where Puck had managed to open the trunk.

         "HOLYFUCKINGSHIT!" Puck cried, staggering back from the trunk.

         "What?" Quinn asked sharply.

         "THERE'S A FUCKING WALKER IN HERE!"

         " _What?_ " Quinn asked again. She looked at Blaine, the fire from the burning Walker between them illuminating the fear in Quinn's eyes.

         "I don't know how to describe it…" Puck said. "This is so fucked up…"

         Quinn, Kurt and Blaine walked across the road to the Honda, where Puck was staring at the trunk, running his fingers through his hair anxiously.

         Blaine gasped when she saw the inside of the trunk. There was a Walker curled up like a fetus. It looked to be the same age as the driver, another male. The smell of rotting flesh was overpowering, and Quinn had turned to vomit. The carcass was full of maggots, the Walker had clearly been inactive for a while.     "What are those tubes?" Kurt asked, gesturing to the Walker's wrists.

         "I don't know, man," Puck answered. "I just don't know."

         There were tubes jammed in the Walker's wrists like the kind Blaine had used in chemistry class. His eyes followed the tubes to the back of the Honda's trunk.

         "There's something back there," Blaine told them. "The tubes lead somewhere."

         Kurt reached in with his gloved hands to gently tug on the tubes. "They're attached to something for sure," he murmured, and he gave the tube a sharp tug. Blaine gasped as a glass jar full of blood revealed itself at the end of the tube.

         "What did this guy want with Walker blood?" Blaine asked, but he knew the answer.

         They all did.

         Experiment.

         Antidote.

***

 

         His name was Mike Chang. He was in his fourth year of university, studying Bioethics. He had a girlfriend named Tina. He loved pens and pencils, and sitting in lecture. He took his notes longhand because he liked the way the pen ink puckered on the paper. He had a smile that could light up a room. He was brilliant. He had been accepted into his Master's program early. His parents were very proud of him.

         His parents were immigrants from Korea. They owned a restaurant. In the summers, he worked as a waiter, smiling and greeting his parent's customers.

         He liked bioethics. He liked thinking about tar sands and DDT and justice. He fantasized about creating new kinds of pesticides, kinds that were gentle on plants and the ozone layer. He dreamt of the Nobel Prize. He wanted to be a scientist because he knew he could make a difference. Sitting in the lab and examining plant cells, taking notes felt like art to him. Bioethics gave him a kind of life that mattered.

         His girlfriend thought he was a genius. She was a music major. She sang opera. He loved the way her voiced sounded as it soared through an aria. He loved to put his hands on her waist as she ran through her scales on the keyboard in their living room. He would gently kiss her neck as she ran through her music. He liked to be close to her. They were both artists. His canvas was a microscope slide.

         They lived together in a tiny apartment a few blocks from campus. They slept on a mattress because they couldn't afford furniture. She made him a bagged lunch. If he was studying late, she packed extra snacks. His parents didn't approve of Mike and Tina living together, but he didn't care. They were going to get married one day. His work would benefit their children, and their grandchildren. When they were old they would move to a huge house in the country and have family picnics and fireworks in the summer.

         God, he loved her.

        He knew about the virus before the public did. He had been working late in the lab, testing a chemical compound he had created on corn cells. His supervisor had walked in, her face ashen.

         "Are you alright?" Mike asked her.

         "How much do you know about zombies?" she had asked him.

         He laughed at her.

         His supervisor didn't smile. "There have been dozens of cases. Three different continents. People who have died and come back to life. I've never heard of anything like it…we don't know what's causing it. Someone was diagnosed with it only an hour outside the city. I think this is the end, Mike."

         He abandoned his lab bench, running home to find Tina. She was in the middle of her final exam prep. She had been working tirelessly on an aria from _Madame Butterfly_ , "Un Bel Di Vedremo." Mike had heard Tina sing it so many times, he knew every note, every sharp and flat as well as he knew the curves of her body.

         He hopped on his bike and pedaled back to their apartment. She would be home, she didn't have to meet with her advisor for another hour. He had never been more terrified in his life. All his plans could be laid to waste if scientists didn't get this virus under control. They must be working on a vaccine already; they must be formulating a global plan. His bike ride, which normally took about 15 minutes, took five that day. His legs were burning as he bolted up the stairs to their building. He jammed the key in the lock, turned the handle furiously and burst into the apartment.

         " _TINA!"_ he bellowed.

         She came running. "Mike? Mike what's wrong? _Mike!_ "

         His knees buckled out from beneath him, and he sank to the floor. "A virus…." he choked out. "We have to get out of here…"

         "A virus? What kind of virus are you talking about?" she was down on the floor with him now, her hands feverishly stroking his face.

         " _Zombies._ "

         She didn't laugh, she understood. She stared at his face for a moment. He looked into her eyes and his heart was breaking. It all flashed before him - their house, their children, the fireworks, the Nobel Prize. All gone.

         "How bad?" was all she said.

         "Three different continents."

         "You have to help."

         "We need to leave - "

         "Mike, listen to me. You've worked your whole life to help others with science. Baby," and here she smiled at him, the smile that was only for him. "This is your chance."

         She kissed him hard. Their mouths opened, tongues sliding together. Slippery hot heat. She climbed on top of him, unbuttoning his pants. They made love on the floor, silently. Clothes half on and palming each other, it felt animalistic. They had never felt like this before. They stared into each other's eyes, feeling, tasting, touching every moment. He held her arms so tightly he left bruises on her skin. It was a tattoo, a reminder of their love. _I was here. You are mine._ She let out a little moan as he came, throwing her head back, her hair cascading around her body. In the evening light, he had never seen anything more beautiful.

         They lay on the hardwood for a while, holding each other, her head on his chest. He pressed gentle kisses into her hair.

         "I have to go back to the lab," he told her. "I have to figure out a way to beat this before it hits the city."

         "I love you," she told him.

         He never saw her again.

         He biked back to the lab, tested samples of his own blood, tested every theory he could think of. It had to be blood, it had to be. About seven hours into his research, the media got wind of the virus. It was in the city now, someone in a downtown hospital had been diagnosed. Traffic was backed up as people fled the city. It didn't make a difference, it was everywhere. Tina nagged at the back of his mind. _Go to her, go._ His work was more important. He had to work.

         He collapsed at his lab bench, exhausted after ten hours of fruitless research. He had mutated some cells, but not the way he wanted, he had studied some cases, but symptoms weren't similar. The radio near the bench crackled with news.

         _Lock yourself indoors._

_Avoid the subways._

_Do not have sex, do not touch anyone who is bleeding._

_Do not help anyone._

         He decided there was nothing to do but go home and shower. The door was open when he got home. His heart dropped. He gently walked into the apartment. There was blood everywhere.

         "Tina?" he called softly.

         Silence.

         He walked to their bedroom, the mattress torn and bloodstained. He saw her then. She was to the left of the mattress on the floor. Her jugular veins had been torn out and flung across the room. He fought the urge to touch her, to lie down next to her and never wake up.

         There were footprints in her blood, slow and dragging. Someone had been here. One of them.

         He stared at her body for what felt like hours, but was really only minutes. He gave no thought to getting a weapon. He only thought of her, and her smell and her taste. The way she had clung to him earlier. He thought about their first kiss, among the stacks of dusty books in the library. He thought of her after a performance, flushed and excited, red lipstick staining her mouth, the way she tasted like stage makeup. He thought about her breasts and they way they fit in his hands. He thought about how they had lost their virginity to each other. He thought of her smile as he met her in the quad after a day of classes. He thought about all that wouldn't be. His heart broke.

         She stirred then. Her legs and arms shifting, a guttural moan coming from her lips. He let out a sob, hot tears springing to his eyes. She was one of them. She had to be terminated. For a fleeting moment, he realized that he would have a specimen to work with, and he was disgusted. He left the apartment and broke the fire glass in the hall, retrieving the axe. He walked back into the apartment. She was standing now, shakily moving around, getting the feel of her new legs.

         She didn't move with the grace of the girl he had come to love but with the clumsiness of the horror film creature that she was. He walked towards her swiftly, raising the axe. He met her eyes before he did. They were not the warm brown he was used to. They were green, sick. He could see the hunger in them. He sliced her head clean off.

         He walked to the kitchen, grabbed a garbage bag and pair of rubber gloves. He bagged her head and used some spare vials to take some of her blood. He put everything in another garbage bag and biked back to the lab.

         Mike Chang the man was gone.

         There was only the scientist.

         In the lab he worked, using Tina's blood, examining the T-Cells, the plasma, the platelets. He knew her blood as well as he knew the sound of her voice running through her scales. Another boy had taken refuge in the lab. His name was Rory. Mike remembered Rory from a couple of organic chemistry classes. They were not friendly, they were cool and businesslike with each other. It was dangerous to get attached. Mike and Rory worked together on the antidote, on the science. There were problems in the blood; mutations like neither boy had seen before. They didn't eat, they drank water and slept. At night they could hear Walkers banging on the door of the lab, desperate to get in and taste their flesh.        

         One day Rory turned to Mike and he said, "I think it would be better if we could _see_ the cells mutate."

         "What are you saying?" Mike asked, although he knew the answer.

         "I'll open the door."

         "Are you sure?"

         "I don't have anything left anymore. I think it would help you with your work. I don't feel like I have any reason to stay. Just draw some of my blood, observe the mutation. Please kill me when you're done."

         "You're the bravest person I've ever met," Mike told him, because it was true.

         "I'm a coward," Rory laughed. "I'm just going to give up."       

         Mike walked over to Rory, placed his hands on the other man's shoulders. "You are the furthest thing from a coward. You're a hero. Your life will save millions."

         They hugged, tightly. Rory breathed deeply in his final moments.

         "Thank you," Rory told him, and opened the door to the lab. He stepped out and shut the door again.

         Mike heard them tearing Rory apart through the night. He cried. When the sounds outside the lab were gone, he opened the door and looked down his companion. He drew blood, and stared at it patiently under a microscope. He took notes as he watched the blood change, the cells morph. He knew what was happening. He understood. He did not know how to stop it. He had ideas and theories, but there were not enough supplies in the lab.

         He killed Rory again and decided it was time to move on. He took Rory's body and put it in the trunk of a teal Honda he found in the lab parking lot. He knew a place a few day's drive from the city - a place where there were chemicals. It was an industrial lab used to mass-produce drugs that Mike had interned for a few summers before. It was secluded enough that Mike thought maybe there would be people to help him with his work. He attached Rory's body to the jars. He started to drive.

         When he drove he thought of Tina, and a road trip they had taken together to visit her parents. She had taken off her shoes and put her bare feet up on the dashboard, singing along to the radio as he drove. As he drove around a curve on the highway, she reached for his hand. He turned to smile at her.

         "I love you," she told him, dazzlingly backlit by the sun.

         "I love you too," he told her.

         They parked the car and slept by the side of the road, huddled together in the backseat. They giggled like teenagers, moving slowly in the cramped space, finding each other's bodies in the darkness, hands dipping below waistbands, lips touching, tongues sliding.

         He did not cry when he remembered her. Instead, his body came alive with the electricity of her. She was all around him. He could feel her. He listened to the radio. There was only static. The lab was locked, abandoned. He broke in, used the microscopes. Worked for four days quietly testing, using the materials that were left by those before.

         The morning he was infected he was working in the lab, using what daylight he could. A vaccine wasn't effective enough - he knew an antidote had to be used. If it was injected before the victim died, they could be saved. A Walker bite wasn't lethal. He bit his lip as he bent over his microscope. _Close. So close._

         He didn't hear the Walker come in. It was a female Walker - her thick brown hair matted with blood and dirt. Her chest cavity had been torn open, her sternum exposed, maggots wriggling in her dead flesh. She shuffled up behind him, and as gentle as a kiss, she bit him in the neck.

         He laughed.

         He turned and snapped her neck with one swift movement. It was a moment of pure violence. He grabbed a test tube and mixed his theory. He injected himself with the antidote.

         He thought that if he was going to die, he would like to die on the highway, surrounded by nature and life. He got behind the wheel of the teal Honda and he drove. He died as he reached the bend in the highway where she had told him she loved him. He knew he was dead because he felt her hand in his. He looked over, and there she was.

         She smiled. "I'm so proud of you," she told him.

         He didn't know if she was real or if his brain had produced her for him. "I love you," he told her.

         "Come with me," she said, tugging on his hand.

         He did.   
  
Chapter Art:

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/5978)

 

  



	5. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/1771)

 

         Quinn was leaning against the wheel of the van, her hair pushed back off her face, staring up at the sun.

         "I wish I knew about chemistry," she mused.

         Blaine sat across from her on the asphalt, staring down at his hands. He sighed. "I wish there was more we could do, I wish there was more to understand."

         Quinn bit her lip and nodded. "I've never felt this useless in my life." She gestured to her side. "I can't really do any heavy lifting, I have _no_ survival skills whatsoever. So much for being an artist."

         Blaine laughed. "It's noble, I think. You did what you wanted to do with your life. You followed your heart."

         "What were you like before?" Quinn asked.

         Blaine sighed. "I wanted to go into international relations."

         "Like a diplomat?"

         "Something like that," Blaine answered. "I hated feeling helpless all the time, thinking about the injustice in the world, you know?"

         Quinn nodded.

         "I wanted to do something to make a difference, I wanted to _help_ people." Blaine looked over to the Honda where Kurt and Puck were fiddling with the gas cap and the chemical tubes to siphon gas into some empty water bottles.

         "Now I just feel helpless," he sighed.

         Quinn reached for Blaine's hands. "You saved us," she pointed out. "You're so strong - it's amazing. I would die if I didn't have anyone with me, but you lasted so long on your own."

         Blaine shrugged and stared down at their clasped hands. "I had to. I'm glad I found you guys, though. I was starting to feel inhuman."

         Quinn nodded knowingly. "I think in moments of crisis, humanity is what we cling to. That's what matters. Feeling human, being human. We need that."

         "I've been feeling a lot like that," Blaine confessed. "It's so nice to just _feel_. Being alone you can't let yourself feel anything."

         "You like him don't you?" Quinn asked suddenly.

         Blaine was silent.

         "I think you should go for it," Quinn said. Blaine flicked his eyes up to meet Quinn's. "If this is the end of the world, you gotta live every minute of it. I know you know that."

         Blaine smiled. "We'll see," he answered. "It's hard. There was another boy, before…It wasn't like you and Puck…"

         "I believe in fate," Quinn said. "He was just walking by the side of the road. Cute boys just don't _appear_ like that. That was someone, somewhere, some cosmic force, pushing you two together. Real talk."

         Blaine laughed. "Maybe you're right."

         Quinn scoffed. "Of course I am!"

         They fell silent, and Blaine let his mind wander to the boy from before. He worked at Starbucks. Blaine used to visit him on his break from work at the music store. The boy knew Blaine's order. Black iced tea with apple juice. He made Blaine laugh.

         "Do you want to catch a movie sometime?" he asked Blaine.

         He said yes.

         They shared a bucket of popcorn and laughed and laughed. He felt young and happy and when he looked at the boy he felt a whoosh in his stomach. They kissed once. His name was Taylor. He smelled like coffee and Nicorette gum. Blaine liked him.

         Once the virus hit, shops and restaurants closed down. People received strict orders to stay at home. Sometimes Blaine would send Taylor a text message. One day the messages stopped and Blaine knew Taylor was dead. It made him bitter, to have possibility ripped away from him like that. Here was something that was shiny and new and clean and _his_. And it wasn't any more.

         As much as he liked Kurt, as much as he made Blaine feel alive and at home and like he was real, he couldn't. He was afraid. He was afraid of liking Kurt too much and having him taken away. He was afraid of loving Kurt, he was afraid of dying.

         Blaine looked over at Kurt, hair falling  in his face as he bent to fiddle with the tube in the gas cap and Blaine felt like his heart was going to explode.

         "Did you ever see _Thelma and Louise_?" Quinn asked, interrupting his reverie.

         "I did."

         "You remind me of Louise."

         "You remind me of Thelma."

         "Good," Quinn smiled.

         "WE GOT GAS!" Puck cried.

         Quinn and Blaine clapped and cheered. Kurt took a bow, grinning mischievously and catching Blaine's eye. Puck plopped down next to Quinn on the pavement.

         "Now all we do is wait for that one to fill up, and keep going until the tank is empty," he said, a satisfied smile on his face.

         "I'm going to take a walk," Kurt announced. "Do you want to come?" he asked Blaine.

         "Sure," Blaine answered softly, standing to go with him.

         "Take the axe," Quinn suggested.

         Kurt grabbed it and led Blaine into the field across the highway. They walked a ways in the sunlight, drifting towards each other and drifting apart, enjoying each other's company. He didn't ask too many questions, and Blaine liked that about him.

         "Good job," Blaine commented.

         "Ah, it was all Puck. I've never done that before," he confessed.

         "I am," Blaine said.

         "Am what?"

         "Gay."

         "Oh."

         Blaine smiled.   

         Kurt smiled back, backlit from the sun, his hair catching the light.

         "I like you," Kurt said. His words cut through the day like the axe he clutched in his left hand. "I like you a lot." His eyes were earnest, pleading for a response from Blaine. Blaine stopped walking and turned to look at Kurt.

         "We could die," Blaine told him.

         "I stopped caring about dying a long time ago," he replied sharply. Kurt's bluntness surprised him.

         "You haven't known me that long at all," Blaine countered, his head spinning with thoughts of a shared bucket of popcorn, of black tea and apple juice and hot summer days.

         "I don't care. I want you. I want it all with you. The world has gone to shit," Kurt spat. "If I'm going down I want to go down with you. I want to _feel_ something before all this is over."

         "I don't _want_ to feel anything," Blaine replied, bitterly. "Feelings get you hurt." He didn't know why he was angry with Kurt, Blaine liked Kurt too. Blaine blinked and Kurt's eyes were green and haunting, blinked again and they were like galaxies and boring into him, full of everything he was afraid of. There was anger and confusion and love, Blaine felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff and going to fall off.

         He had been toying with his humanity over the last few days, regaining it bit by bit. If he walked over to Kurt, closed the gap between them and kissed his mouth like Blaine's body willed him to, it would be over. He wouldn't be a killer anymore. He would be a human. He would be Blaine, a boy who knew his way around a pair of swords, who feared for his life on a frequent basis, who missed his mother and his father and his brother and his old life.

         Kurt decided for him, tossing the axe aside and taking three steps towards Blaine, grabbing his face in his hands. Kurt moved his lips towards Blaine's, and then he hesitated for a moment. It was a request. Blaine closed his eyes.

         _Yes._

         It didn't come.

         There was a popping noise, almost like a firework.

         And then screaming.

         Blaine opened his eyes, catching Kurt's for a moment and turning to look back at the van.

         " _HELP!"_ It was Quinn.

         Blaine turned and ran back to the van, blood rushing in his ears. When he reached the van, time slowed down. Everything slowed down.

         Puck was lying on the road, blood spurting from a wound in his neck. Quinn was screaming, cradling his head in her lap, saying his name over and over again. Her shirt was off, her undershirt clinging to her skin, drenched in sweat

         She pressed it to the wound at the base of Puck's neck. Blaine slapped his hands over his mouth and stumbled backwards.

         "Someone _shot him_!" Quinn screeched, her voice piercing the afternoon air.

         "Who shot him?" Blaine asked, breathlessly. Kurt came up behind him and the colour drained from his face. He turned and stumbled away from the scene, vomiting as he went.

         "I don't know what to do!" Quinn said, looking at Blaine desperately. "We have to _help him!"_

         "Okayokayokayokay," Blaine said, turning to grab supplies from the van. "We have to take the bullet out," he announced, turning to look at Quinn.

         "No you don't take the bullet out!" Quinn cried, her face a blank canvas for the terror that was clearly consuming her. "If we take it out, it'll bleed more!" She moved her shirt from Puck's wound, it was spent, full of blood.

         Blaine approached the pair slowly with the first aid kit from the truck stop and towels. "Here's a clean towel, we need to stop the bleeding, sterilize and treat the wound."

         "Is there like an artery or something? Oh, _fuck_ I don't know why I dropped biology," Quinn sobbed, tossing her shirt aside, revealing the wound.

         Closer, it appeared to be at the base of Puck's neck, just where his shoulder finished. It glistened with blood.

         "Nothing looks punctured to me, but I'm not a doctor," Blaine said, turning to the first aid kit.

         "We can treat him," a voice said.

         Blaine looked up from Puck and his eyes fell on a boy standing over the scene. He was about six feet tall, with broad shoulders and bleached blonde hair, wearing a baseball cap. He had a sniper rifle in his right hand. He looked proud of himself.

         "Who are you?" Quinn spat.

         "My name is Sam," the boy answered. "I can help you."

        "You obviously _shot him_ ," Quinn replied, standing to face him. He towered over her. "We don't need your help," she sneered, shoving Sam.

         Sam looked Blaine dead in the eye. "We shot him because we needed to protect our group. You guys check out OK to us. We can treat him. It's your call."

         Blaine looked back at Sam and he felt completely helpless. Quinn was putting all her effort into pushing Sam, but he was so tall and broad her attempts were futile. Blaine looked down at Puck, unconscious and still bleeding. He was overcome with the responsibility of the moment. He didn't want to decide, he didn't want to have to decide. He felt alone.

         He felt a wave of anger. "Why do you get to decide who lives and who dies?" he asked Sam sharply.

         Sam looked at Blaine blankly. "We're just doing what you're doing," he replied.

         "And what's that?"

         "Surviving."

        Blaine scoffed. What did Sam know? The last two weeks had been so intense. He'd met Quinn and Puck, found Kurt, slain countless Walkers. He did it to survive, to make it. This senseless act of violence that had placed a dying boy in his arms was not for _survival,_ it was a power trip.

         "You don't get to play God," he told Sam. "This wasn't your call."

         Sam laughed at him coldly. Quinn stopped trying to shove him over and walked past Blaine to Kurt. The sounds of his retching had stopped, and Blaine hoped Quinn could pull him together.

         "There is no God," Sam said. "The Walker in the trunk of that car is a testament to it. Do you want our help or not? He's running out of time."

         Blaine sighed and surveyed Puck again. His blood had pooled on the pavement, staining the asphalt and Blaine's clothes. Blaine knew that Puck was more important than his pride. Blaine was terrified of Sam, his mysterious "group," the way they had painted him into a corner. Their control was obvious and intimidating. Blaine had no choice, and Sam knew that. He hated feeling helpless and desperate and scared and alone.

         "Fine, you can treat him. But we're all coming with you," Blaine said, gesturing to Quinn and Kurt, who were standing behind him. Kurt looked a little green, but otherwise alright.

         "Suit yourself," Sam replied. He bent over and scooped Puck up, slinging him over his shoulders.

         "CAREFUL!" Quinn screeched.

         Blaine stood and quietly grabbed Quinn's hand.

         "You're OK," Blaine murmured. Quinn turned to look at him, eyes full of tears.

         "This is the worst day of my life," Quinn confessed. Blaine just squeezed her hand harder.

         They started walking behind Sam, abandoning the cars on the highway and the smoldering pile of Walkers. Kurt slipped his hand into Blaine's and they held tight.

         It felt strange seeing Puck broken, walking without him along the highway and through some trees just off the road. Kurt's hand was warm and soft. Blaine felt unbalanced, one hand being squeezed into oblivion and the other gently cradled. They followed Sam for about fifteen minutes through the trees beyond the highway. They stepped into a clearing and Quinn gasped, squeezed Blaine's hand harder than he thought possible.

         In the clearing was about half a dozen cars arranged in a circle. A couple had the seats ripped out of them and were bare frames. Others had the roofs torn off and were being used for storage. They were standing in a village. There were three people standing in the clearing besides Blaine, Quinn, Kurt and Sam. There was a short brunette girl, a tall Latina and a clueless looking blonde standing near the cars.    "I shot him," Sam announced.

         "Why would you do that?" the Latina quipped. "We don't have _nearly_ enough supplies."

         "They looked suspicious," Sam said, laying Puck down in a car frame.

         The short brunette was digging in the trunk of one of the cars for supplies. She walked over to Puck and looked him over.

         "Shit," she said.

         "Is he dead?" Quinn's voice was desperate.

         "Who's this?" the Latina asked, looking Quinn up and down.

         "I don't know," Sam said, waving his hand. "His girlfriend or something."

         "I still don't get why you shot him," the brunette's voice came from the car where she was treating Puck's wound.

         "They had two vehicles," Sam answered. "And they had a Walker in the trunk of one of them."

         The three girls froze.

         "A _dead_ Walker?" the Latina asked carefully.

         "That wasn't our car," Blaine answered. They were standing awkwardly on the edge of the clearing and he didn't like it. They weren't travelling circus freaks who needed to be brought in for examination. They were survivors, just like this group. "It was driving down the road. The driver was dead."

         "He was infected," Kurt continued. Blaine noticed that Kurt hadn't let go of his hand. "We killed him and then opened the trunk to see if he had any supplies. He had the Walker all rigged up and was draining its blood."

         "We're not sure what it was for," Blaine finished.

         "Sounds like an antidote to me," the Latina replied, looking at Sam.

         Sam shrugged. "I don't want to risk anyone getting infected, especially with open wounds left and right."

         The Latina turned to the blonde, who had been silent for the duration of the conversation, staring blankly into space.

         "Brittany, if we brought you a Walker, would that help with your experiments?"

         The blonde stared for a moment and then answered, "The blood might help."

         "Wait until I patch this one up!" the brunette called from the van. "He's lost so much blood, I'm not sure he'll make it."

         Blaine glanced over at Quinn, but her face was as blank as Brittany's.

         "I'm done I guess," the brunette said, stepping out of the van. "He's still breathing, we just have to wait for him to regain consciousness. Which could be hours, or days."

         Quinn was silent.

         Kurt held Blaine's hand.

         The brunette stepped forward, she was surprisingly short. "I'm Rachel."

         Blaine shook her hand. "I'm Blaine, that's Kurt, and that's Quinn."

         Rachel smiled. "Nice to meet you."

         Blaine raised an eyebrow. "That's not exactly what I was thinking."

         "What do you mean?" Rachel asked.

         "You shot my friend, and now we're basically stuck waiting with your group until he's better. You've got complete control over us. Don't think I didn't notice," Blaine spat.

         Rachel shrugged. "Survival of the fittest," she answered. "You can check him out now." She walked away.

         A guttural scream came from Blaine's left.

         _Quinn._

         She had launched herself at Rachel, she was screaming louder and more shrill than Blaine had ever heard in her life. They had tumbled to the ground, and Quinn had a fistful of Rachel's hair, both girls were screaming expletives at each other.

         " _FUCK YOU FUCK DARWIN YOU SHOT HIM"_

                  Blaine ran towards Quinn, dropping Kurt's hand. He yanked Quinn off of Rachel, pulling her back by her shoulders, her blonde hair flying.

         " _YOU'RE DISGUSTING! LET GO OF ME!"_ Quinn screamed, pushing Blaine away from her arms. Blaine gripped her tightly, feeling terrified. Quinn struggled, kicking and scratching Blaine with all the force she could. Kurt walked around to Quinn and put his hands on either side of her face. Quinn stopped, slowed, panting. Kurt kissed her forehead softly.

         "Stop," he told her.

         She collapsed in Blaine's arms, falling towards Kurt. He caught her and hugged her tightly. Blaine fell into the hug, enveloping Quinn the way that she and Puck had cared for Blaine at the truck stop. Quinn wasn't crying, but Blaine could feel her energy, how desperate and alone she was.

         Blaine felt a tap on his shoulder and broke the embrace to turn and look at Sam. "You can sleep in that van," he gestured to a gutted car, filled with blankets and pillows.

         "Thanks," Blaine said icily.

         Blaine turned and grabbed Quinn's hand. They walked to the van, Kurt close behind. The three of them clambered in, claiming blankets and pillows for the night.

         Blaine hadn't even noticed the time, the darkness settling in around them.

         "We should keep watch," Kurt said. "I don't trust them."

         "We can take shifts," Blaine offered. "I'll go first."

         "I'm going to sleep," Quinn announced, burying herself in blankets and curling up in a corner of the van.

         "You should sleep too," Kurt said, reaching to tuck a lock of Blaine's curly dark hair behind his ear.

         He blushed.

         "We could do it together," Blaine said softly, looking up at Kurt through hos lashes.

         Kurt smiled. "We could." He reached for Blaine's hand, lacing their fingers together.

         "The moon looks beautiful," Blaine murmured. His heart was pounding, still pumping with the day's adrenaline.

         "It does," Kurt agreed, but he wasn't looking at the moon.

         Blaine inhaled sharply. He hadn't been this nervous around a guy in a long time, he hadn't even felt this way around Taylor. He felt stupid falling so quickly for a complete stranger, but Kurt understood him in a way that others didn't. Kurt felt his need to protect, comfort, shield. Kurt knew when Blaine couldn't fight alone, knew when he needed to be alone. He hadn't been this attuned to someone since before the Change, and it was exhilarating.

         "What were you like in high school?" Kurt asked him.

         "I was alright," he answered. "Kept to myself I guess. There were problems with bullies. What about you?"

         Kurt smiled and bit his lip. "You're so mysterious."

         "I don't like talking about before," Blaine confessed.

         "Why not?"

         "It feels better to imagine that it wasn't real. It hurts less."

         "I think that remembering the past is going to get us ready for the future, whatever it is," Kurt told him. "We can't be this shortsighted anymore. I remember when they found the first one in China, they didn't think it could cross the ocean."

         "They were wrong," Blaine murmured. Kurt squeezed his hand.

         "The past gives us something to fight for," he continued. "We'll find a way for your brother and my dad. We can honour them by surviving."

         Blaine looked over at Kurt, his eyes shining with tears. "When I was on my own, before I met Quinn and Puck, I just ran and slaughtered Walkers. It was exhausting. When I found Quinn and Puck, I couldn't believe there were real, living people like me. It was like a miracle. Since I've been with them all there's been is trouble, and hurt and…" he took a moment to breathe. "If any of you guys turned, I think I would just infect myself. I think I would just die. I can't lose my family again. I can't be alone -"

         Kurt cut him off with a kiss. It was soft, not invasive. His lips were warm and tender. Blaine kissed him back, gently. His heart felt like it was going to burst. Blaine wanted him, wanted everything, under the full moon. Kurt moved his hand to cup Blaine's face, bringing them closer. Blaine squeezed their entwined fingers.

         Kurt broke the kiss and looked at Blaine in the moonlight. "I've never met a boy like you," he said. "You won't be alone again."

         Blaine laughed. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing, that you've never met a boy like me?"

         Kurt grinned. "A good thing."

         They kissed until the moon faded from the sky and the sun replaced it.   
  
Chapter Art:  
  
  



	6. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/1470)

 

Puck didn't wake up until three days later.

         After their first night in the van, Quinn had moved to sleep next to Puck, spending the three days watching him and holding his hand. She ignored any attempts Rachel, Sam, Brittany or Santana made to talk to her. She would check his breathing and his heartbeat and spend nights with her arm flung across his chest.

         Once, Blaine tried to talk to her about leaving the van, taking a patrol with him. Quinn just shook her head. "We're in this together," she said, holding Puck's hand. "He stayed with me when my family was gone. Not today." Blaine had just nodded, heart swelling from the intensity they felt for each other.

         Blaine and Kurt spent time together, holding hands and speaking quietly. Sam had helped them push their van and the teal Honda into the car village. Santana and Rachel had taken the supplies and stored them with the ones they had already accumulated. It seemed that despite the hostility the two groups felt towards one another that they were simply one now. Survival does that to people. Santana had shells for their shotgun, Brittany had mysteriously examined the dead Walker in the trunk of the teal Honda, murmuring to Santana before the pair had lifted the Walker and the jars from the trunk and carried them to a van with tinted windows at the edge of the clearing.

         Sam explained to Blaine and Kurt that the group took patrols every two hours, and that they would be expected to participate. They were patrol partners, and they had to walk within a twenty-mile radius of the clearing, bringing weapons with them and reporting on any Walkers. It was boring work, but Kurt and Blaine liked to go together, walking through the forest, talking and laughing, learning each other in ways they had forgotten.

         It was on the third day, just as Blaine and Kurt were returning to the clearing from their patrol that they heard Puck's voice.

         "You want to explain to me how the _fuck_ I got shot?" his voice rang across the clearing.

         Blaine and Kurt exchanged a quick glance and jogged over to the van where he had been resting. Puck was sitting up, supported by Quinn and in the middle of a heated exchange with Sam.

         "Your group was a threat to ours," Sam explained bitterly.

         Puck rolled his eyes. "Well, by all means, _shoot me_. That'll solve all your problems."

         "It's not worth it," Quinn told him. Puck turned to look at her. She raised her eyebrows and nodded. He sighed and nodded back before turning to look at Sam.

         "I don't like you," Puck told Sam. "I don't like your 'moral code.' I think it's twisted as fuck. I don't like the girls you're with, I don't like that you suddenly have our supplies. But I'm willing to work with you as long as you get your head out of your ass and stop acting like a motherfucker. Does that sound good?" Puck extended his hand. Sam shook it, hard.

         "Fine," Sam agreed, and walked away.

         The first moment he got, Blaine threw his arms around Puck. Puck chuckled.

         "Missed you," Blaine whispered, and Puck squeezed Blaine tight.

         "Missed you too, little buddy," he whispered back.

         They pulled apart and Blaine reached for Kurt, pulling him into a group hug with Quinn and Puck.

         "You're my family now," Quinn murmured and they gripped each other so tightly Blaine thought he was going to explode. The connection that he felt with his three friends was unlike anything he had ever felt. Brought together out of desperation but still together because of desire. In the decaying landscape of his country, his planet, in their arms he found a kind of life that was scarce.

         As they pulled apart, Blaine noticed Quinn wince. "How're your stitches doing?" Blaine asked. Kurt turned to look at Blaine, studying his profile, a smile playing on his lips.

         Quinn's eyes flicked up to meet Blaine's and then flicked down. "I think they're fine," she said softly.

         "Bullshit," Puck said sharply. "Show me."

         Quinn glanced nervously around the small circle before lifting her shirt to reveal her wound.

         Blaine gasped. The wound was badly infected, bright red and swollen, pus weeping from the puncture holes in Quinn's flesh. Puck made a choking noise.

         "It's fine, really," Quinn said. "I've been wiping it down with iodine every night…"

         "Clearly that's not enough," Blaine said, sneaking a glance at Puck. He was devastated, not even trying to hide the look of horror on his face.

         "Well, we ran out of bandages and I just…" Quinn trailed off. "I didn't think it was that important."

         Blaine bit his lip and looked at Kurt. "Let's ask Santana what's she's got, since the supplies are communal now…"

         Kurt nodded and took his hand. They walked to the other side of the clearing where Santana was sitting in the trunk of a Ford and stitching a hole in a sweatshirt closed.

         "Hi," Kurt said.

         Santana looked up from her sewing, raised an eyebrow.

         "Quinn has  a pretty bad infection. We were wondering -"

         "If I had anything _lying around_ to save your precious little blonde? Sorry, I don't." She went back to stitching.

         "What do you mean?" Blaine asked. "You've taken all our supplies. I thought we were supposed to be working together."

         "I don't have any antibiotics," Santana replied. "I can give you guys some clean bandages, some more iodine. Once she gets a fever she'll have three, four days tops."

         Santana's words hit Blaine like a brick. Quinn couldn't _die_ , that was impossible. None of them were going to die, they were going to make it. They were going to get through this.

         "That's not an option," Blaine spat, and he felt Kurt squeeze his hand. "You need to do better."

         Santana laughed. "Look around, this _is_ doing better. We're isolated from the Walkers, we've got supplies, food and water. People live and people die. I thought you'd have figured that out by now."

         Blaine stared at Santana, seething. He had never wanted to hit someone more in his entire life. After everything they had fought for, the way he'd struggled to survive, it was all going to end here. He was just supposed to _resolve_ everything, accept death as an inevitability?

         Kurt led Blaine away gently back to Quinn. "There's no antibiotics," Blaine admitted sadly.

         Quinn smiled tightly. "It's alright," she said, taking Blaine's hand. "We'll make it work."

         Blaine clutched Quinn's hand tightly, and he didn't know if he believed her one bit.

***

         When he was six years old, he played zombies in the yard with his older brother.

         "Come on, Blaine," he would call out. "We gotta find the humans and eat their _brains_."

         "Eeeew," Blaine would say, scrunching up his nose in disgust. "I don't wanna eat brains."

         "Yeah you do," Cooper would grin. "You're a _zombie_ now, just like me."

         He would stick out his arm and cock his head to one side, moaning. " _Braaaaaaaaiiiins, braaaaains…"_         They would run around the yard, screaming and laughing until their mother called them in for lunch. They would sit at the table with a plateful of peanut butter and banana sandwiches and glasses of milk and talk and talk about zombies.

         "If the zombies come, we have to stick together," Cooper would rationalize, his mouth dry and sticky with peanut butter.

         "It's scary," Blaine said once, his hazel eyes wide.         

         "I won't let them get you, Blaine," Cooper smiled, grabbing Blaine's sticky hand in his own. "I'll protect you."

         Twelve years later, they sat at the same table, arguing about the vaccination.

         "Cooper, I can't believe you're being so stupid. Sharing a needle? That's a death sentence," Blaine spat. The plate of sandwiches lay untouched between them, their mother and father talking behind a locked door somewhere.

         "Mom and Dad are right, this is our best chance. All four of us are clean, we haven't left the designated area in over three months. The virus is moving closer." He was pleading with Blaine, Cooper knew as well as Blaine did that time was not a luxury any more.

         "Why don't we run away somewhere? Get in the car and go. We'll be safe out there."

         Cooper had laughed at him, the coldness behind it like a slap in the face. "You really think you'll get past the guards? No city officials want the people outside of here infected."

         Blaine sighed in frustration, tears stinging his eyes. He couldn't explain it, he just knew it was a bad idea. It felt so _wrong_ to him. In every movie he'd watched, every novel he'd read, the only way to escape the virus was to leave and get out. Staying to fight it meant certain death.

         "I know you're going to die if you get vaccinated," Blaine told him. "I just know."

         Cooper looked Blaine dead in the eye. "I would rather be a liability of the government than be bitten by one of those fuckers."

         Cooper stood up and walked away. The next day his family was vaccinated. The day after that, they were dead. Blaine didn't know what happened next because he ran. He ran and ran until he couldn't cry anymore and his lungs burned and his legs ached.

        

***

        

         He was sitting in a van, looking out at the moon, big and round and full in the sky. He didn't hear Kurt come up beside him.

         "It's beautiful," Kurt said.

         Blaine didn't turn to look at him, instead keeping his gaze on the glowing orb above them. "It is," he agreed.

         Kurt shuffled closer to Blaine, slipping his arm around Blaine's waist. Blaine leaned into him.

         "What are you thinking about?" Kurt asked.

         "My brother," he answered.

         Kurt sighed.

         They were silent, the sounds of the sleeping camp consuming their space. There were crickets somewhere. There was a stream of water, probably infected with the blood of dead Walkers.

         "I like being with you," Blaine told him.

         "I like being with you, too."

         "I'm scared," Blaine admitted. The words hung in the air. It wasn't acceptable to be scared. There was only fight. There was only flight. There was no scared. Being scared was how you got infected. His quiet admission set the stillness on its edge.

         If he was being honest, he didn't know Kurt all that well. Tragedy had thrust them together closely. Sometimes their lips touched. They elected to be a pair. They were mates. They had each other. When they walked in the woods, they talked about the people that they used to be. Kurt knew how to fix cars thanks to working in his father's garage. He liked the smell of incense. Blaine had seen every _Rocky_ movie and had a folder on his computer dedicated to pictures of abs. He liked the smell of fresh leather.

         "It's OK to be scared," Kurt told him, even though it wasn't.

         "I don't know how to help Quinn."

         "We'll find a way," Kurt assured him, even though he didn't know what way that would be.

         "I'm getting tired of hoping," Blaine confessed, breaking his vigil with the moon to look Kurt in the eye.

         "Hoping is all we can do," Kurt told him. "It makes us human."

         Blaine started to cry. "It's OK to hope," Kurt whispered, brushing tears off Blaine's cheeks.

         "I want to be smart about it," Blaine said. "Sometimes I catch myself praying to God and it doesn't make sense because this virus proves that there _isn't_ any God."

         "I do that too. We all do that I think."

         "It makes me angry. I wish I could forget, I wish I could grow up, but I _can't_. I feel like I'm stuck, like Old Blaine won't go away. I try to push him back and he's nagging at me all the time. Life is never going to be the same."

         "Old Blaine and New Blaine are allowed to want the same things," Kurt said suddenly.

         "I want my family back," Blaine said, shutting his eyes and releasing a flood of tears.

         "You have a new family now. You have me." 

         They kissed, and it was desperate. Want, touch, taste, close.

         "I just want to feel something," Blaine whispered against Kurt's lips. "I want to feel alive."

         Kurt's breath hitched. "Now I'm scared," he murmured.

         It's stupid and foolish to make love when a virus is running rampant, but they did anyway. It was quiet and terrifying. It was dry and awkward and nothing like a movie or anything in a romance novel. It was what they needed. Adrenaline rushed through their veins, blood pulsed through their bodies in a way that was new and thrilling. There was no God, or hope, or antibiotics, but there was this. There was moving together under the moon and it was full and round and it lit up the night in a way a thousand stars never could.

***

         The next day around noon, Brittany pulled Blaine aside. "I have to talk to you," she said, her blue eyes piercing. Blaine blushed, worried that someone had heard the night before, but his worry was for nothing.

         "The blood that was in the trunk of that car," Brittany said. "I've been using it."

         Blaine raised his eyebrows expectantly.

         "I've been working on an antidote."

         Blaine froze. "Why are you telling me?"

         "I just thought you should know," Brittany said. "I've been working on it for so long, Santana doesn't think it's going to work. But I think I've got it."

         "For someone that claims to be your friend, Santana spends a lot of time not believing in you."

         "Don't talk about what you don't know," Brittany said simply. She wasn't being malicious or sharp, just stating a fact.

         "I'm glad you think you've found a solution," Blaine replied. "I hope you never have to use it."

        

         Brittany had to administer the antidote three hours later.  
  
Chapter Art:  
  
  
[](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/5325)  


 


	7. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/1858)

 

 

         They were on a routine patrol when they found the building. It was a little outside the patrol area, but Puck wanted to check it out.

         "We have an axe, it can't be too bad in there," he reasoned.

         It was a concrete building, about three stories high. It looked industrial and unwelcoming. Biohazard signs were posted around the outside.

         "What kind of place was this?" Blaine wondered. He turned to Kurt, who just shrugged his shoulders. It was unusual for three people to be on patrol, but Puck was regaining his strength and needed a walk. At first, Blaine had been reluctant for Puck to come along. He wanted to talk to Kurt about the night before, what it meant, where they were going. Kurt had simply taken Blaine's hand and kissed his palm softly, a gesture that meant "later."

         "I heard a rumour," Kurt said. "That they were testing on live Walkers outside of the city, but I didn't think it was true."

         "I heard that too," Puck agreed. "Quinn and I did performance art based on that one time. There were some human rights groups who came forward to talk about it."

         "Why would anyone be concerned with that," Blaine wondered aloud as they neared the building.

         "Because at some point, the Walkers had been human," Puck replied.

         Blaine scoffed. There was nothing human about Walkers. They were monsters, ripped straight from a world of nightmares. As far as Blaine was concerned, once their eyes were green and their flesh was rotting, they deserved the worst.

         When they reached the building, they found the doors unlocked. "That can't be good," Puck joked, and then a Walker grabbed him by the neck.

         Blaine screamed. The Walker looked like it was starving, its skin paler than normal, its rotting flesh falling from its bones. It looked so weak, a fresher Walker would have ripped Puck's neck to ribbons in seconds, but this Walker failed to maintain its grip on Puck, giving Blaine time to swing the axe and chop the Walker clean in half. Puck staggered back clutching his neck.

         " _Fuck,"_ Puck gasped.

         "Are you alright?" Kurt asked, inspecting Puck's neck for any open wounds. Blaine stood guard, clutching the axe tightly. He could hear Walkers moaning inside the building.

         "Scared the _shit_ out of me," Puck said.

         "You look OK," Kurt announced. 

         "It was stupid of us to open that door," Blaine whispered. "We have to kill them all now."

         "There can't be that many who are still alive," Kurt reasoned. "That one looked like it was in bad shape."

         Blaine closed his eyes and tried to rationalize the situation. There could be a minimum of twenty Walkers in there, and they had one axe. A feeling of doom settled over him.

         "I think we should shut that door and walk away," he said. "And let Santana and Sam handle this."

         "Look," Kurt told him. "We'll be fine. We can take care of the Walkers in here no problem. Maybe there'll be some supplies we can bring back to Brittany."

         When they had first arrived at the camp, Brittany had shown them a list of what she thought she might need. Each patrol took a copy with them in case they stumbled on something interesting. Something interesting like a large concrete biohazard building teeming with Walkers. Blaine reached in his pocket to inspect the list. In a childish hand, Brittany had scrawled:

        

         _\- microscope_

_\- lab coat_

_\- gloves_

_\- test tubes_

_\- maraviroc_

_\- enfuvirtide_

_\- raltegravir_

_\- bevirimat_

_\- Vivecon_

        

         The list, Brittany had explained, contained scientific supplies (most of which she already had, but it couldn't hurt to bring in more) and several drugs used for the management of HIV/AIDS. Brittany had done miserably in high school, but in college she had taken a shine to chemistry. "I like mixing potions," she would murmur softly when asked about her passion.

         She was fearless in the lab, not understanding risk and doing whatever she could to find answers. Brittany and Santana were both in graduate school, Brittany working on her thesis in biochemistry and Santana studying law when the virus hit. They had been best friends since high school, often falling in and out of love with each other. At the time of The Change, they were broken up, but decided to stick together. Their group had started out fairly large - it included Santana's paralegal girlfriend, Sam's roommate Chandler, and Brittany's lab partner Dustin. They traveled from the city to the woods, following the medical news as best they could.

         The WHO speculated that the virus acted in a similar way to HIV/AIDS, bonding to T-Cells and morphing human blood to create the blood of the Walkers. It was all so abstract, so unclear. Brittany had explained the science of the virus to all the newcomers to the group, but Blaine could barely grasp it.

         He bit his lip and looked at Kurt. "Okay," Blaine said slowly. "But we stick together. And if we get overwhelmed, we get out."

         Kurt smiled and nodded. "Agreed," Puck said.

         The three of them crept in the dark building. Immediately, Blaine was overcome with the scent of rotting flesh. He gagged.

         "Oh my _god,_ " Kurt coughed.

         And then they heard the moans. Hundreds and hundreds of moaning creatures. "The sound is coming from up ahead," Puck deduced, grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall to use as a weapon.

         Kurt pulled a section of pipe off a bare wall and the group proceeded forward cautiously. They walked through a long corridor and then they stepped out into what looked like a prison.

         Blaine gasped. It was a prison alright, a _Walker_ prison. Instead of inmates occupying the cells, there were thousands of Walkers. He staggered back, gripping his axe tightly, his eyes full of tears. Some of the Walkers were still alive, but weak. Others were feasting on the bodies of their dead companions. The Walkers had caught Blaine, Kurt and Puck's scent and were reaching through the bars of their cells to get a taste.

         "Oh my god," he whispered.

         "What are we going to do?" asked Puck.

         "We have to burn it down," Kurt said.

         Blaine exhaled slowly. He felt like he was in a nightmare, like he had fallen down a rabbit hole to hell.

         And then.

         " _Kurt, look out!"_

        

_It was a female Walker, her hair was falling out in patches. Dirt._

_The smell._

_She._

_Bit._

_Him._

        

_Kurt._

_Blaine blacked out._

There are things he does not remember about that day, like the way that Kurt looked, or how big the bite on his neck was, or Quinn's face when they walked back to camp, but he does remember the _sound_.

         It sounded like this:

         Santana: What are you doing? Is that Kurt? What the fuck is going on?

         Sam: What's wrong with him?

         Puck: A Walker bit him.

         Rachel: (screams)

         Santana: Get it together, drama queen.

         Rachel: (crying)

         Quinn is quiet.

         Puck: Blaine said Brittany had an antidote.

         Santana just laughs.

         Brittany: We can try.

         Kurt coughs.

         His body was lying in a van, Blaine keeping a constant vigil at his side. The antidote was administered every two hours, Brittany taking his blood for testing.

         "He's dying," she told Blaine. "His blood isn’t changing, but he's dying."

         Blaine did not want it to end this way; he did not want Kurt to die holding Blaine’s hand, blood still coming from his neck. There was no more time and he just wanted time, time, time. He thought of his father, his brother, his mother. He thought of his friends, of the boys who would never be fathers, the boys who would never be men.   

         He thought of Kurt and how desperately he wanted him to live. He thought of kissing Kurt and making love to him and wanting to drown in him forever and ever. He thought about sleeping and never waking up. The world was broken but Kurt had fixed it. Blaine was stuck in the past but Kurt made him see the future. Blaine wanted babies and he wanted to be an old man and he wanted it with Kurt. Holding Kurt’s hand, Blaine could only think _gone, gone, gone._

         It is impossible to describe the grief. You are given a glimmer of hope, and it is taken away. Here is something new to cling to, something beautiful. It becomes ugly. You cannot hold onto it any longer. Here is something very fragile and now it is broken. It leaves an indelible mark on the soul. When you can't grieve, death becomes far away and unimportant. At the end of the world, death is all around you. You should get used to it.

         But you don't.

        

         You cling to life like it's everything and death is _not_ an option, no way, because you have to prove that you can keep on living. And you have sex in a van under the moon and you're _alive_ and you laugh at God because you've proved him wrong. You have found a way to live when so many others have died, and isn't that just hilarious?

         God doesn't like to be laughed at.

         Maybe there is no God; maybe the death of the boy you love isn't some big, cosmic joke. Maybe it's just fate that he was standing and no one saw or heard the Walker coming. Maybe this is the best way. Maybe this is the only way. Maybe since the day he was born he's been racing to this moment, lying in the back of a van unconscious surrounded by people he never knew until a month before. Maybe this is what he wants.

         There are no answers in death.

         Blaine remembers once he went to church with his family, and he remembered listening to the sermon. The priest had talked about "Our God being a God of questions." That "the more you ask of God the more he will ask of you." And Blaine was holding Kurt’s hand and he just kept asking "Why, why, why, why?" and there was nothing. Silence. "Why won't you answer me?"

         The antidote does not work.

         Well, that's not exactly true. It worked. Kurt did not turn. Once he died, he did not reanimate. They buried him and he did not burst from the earth. But the antidote did not save him. It did not keep him in Blaine’s arms. It did not allow them another night together under the moon. It did not even give them more time. His eyes stayed closed. Blaine did not get to see them again. His last memory of the exploding supernovas would be in an expression of surprise, as a Walker devoured his neck.

         Blaine did not cry, and he thought that was unusual.

         Quinn held his hand when Sam and Puck lowered Kurt’s body into the dirt. Rachel wailed. Blaine just felt the tightness of Quinn's grip. _Tight tight squeeze squeeze this is real you are here you cannot jump in the ground with him._ Blaine laid down in a van and he did not leave for three days. He did not eat and he still did not cry. He did not know if he wanted to live or die, he only knew what he did want. He wanted to hunt again, some nights he got the incredible urge to leave the camp for a while and go back to the testing facility. To make them pay, make them suffer. He wanted to watch their eyeballs burst and he wanted to feel their flesh come apart under his weapon. He wanted to hear them moan as their lives ended for the second time. They were creatures, they were demons. He wanted them to feel as he did. He wanted them to feel desperate and alone and unhappy. But he knew they could not feel because they were not human. Nothing about the world was human anymore.

         They forgot that Brittany had quietly and brilliantly created an antidote that could save infected victims. He did not remind them, he kept working. Santana did not laugh at her any more, instead finding new ways to help. They all found new ways to help, falling into work to forget that one of their own was gone. Quinn spent a lot of time sitting with Blaine. Blaine liked to think it was purely out of pity, but they both knew it was because Quinn's infection was getting worse.

         Each night, Blaine watched as Quinn and Puck worked to treat the wound, inflamed and leaking pus. Iodine, bleach, boiling water, polysporin. They did what they could. The thought of more death around him was terrifying to Blaine. He had accepted his death long ago, deciding that if he died it would be for the better, that he had fought to stay alive long enough. But fighting without his friends, without the people he had grown to love, felt like a waste of time.

         "I loved you," he whispered to the moon at night. "You were my second chance."

         They did not return to the strange Walker prison, the place where ghosts made a home. Puck wanted to set it on fire.

         "We need to burn it down. The Walkers are going to get out, I can feel it," he said one night in a camp meeting.

         "There's so much we don't understand," Rachel reasoned. "We can't go back there."

         "It's a dangerous place," Sam agreed. "If the government is using it for testing we should stay away."

         "There is no government," Blaine said darkly. He was desperate for revenge but he did not say so, he could not put those he loved in danger. He could only wish for those he loved to come back to him.

         "We don't know that," Quinn piped up. "If we had a radio, maybe."

         "Can we get a car radio to work?" Puck suggested.

         "We can try," Santana said. "The only person who knew anything about cars is lying in the dirt over there." She gestured to Kurt's grave. The circle froze.

         "Fuck you," Puck said. "I hot wired a fucking car. I know how to make a radio work."        

         Santana barked out a laugh and no one mentioned Kurt again after that.

         Puck hot wired one of the vans in their camp and fiddled with the radio for over an hour. Nothing. The next day, he tried another car. Quinn would sit shotgun while he worked, not talking, just watching. Blaine found ways to be useful around camp, mending ripped seams, rationing what little food they had, sharpening weapons. He thought about Kurt every minute of every day, but he was not sad. It was the same way that he thought of his family. Everything was in their name. All his work, every footstep he took. It meant he was surviving; it meant that he could keep going. He wanted to prove them wrong. _I won't die without you. I can do this._

         He had a secret. It was a small secret, but he didn't tell anyone about it.  **When Kurt died, he slipped the braided leather strap from his wrist and added it to his own.** That night lying under the moon, Kurt had explained it to Blaine.

         "It was my stepbrother's," he said softly, running his fingers along Blaine’s bare shoulder. "I took it to remind myself that I once had a family. That there was life before all this death."

         "That's beautiful," Blaine told him.

         "You're beautiful."

         They kissed and kissed until their lips felt swollen.

         And now it was Blaine’s, and it reminded him of different things. It reminded him of his life, and why it was valuable. It reminded him to keep going. He did those things. He did those things for Kurt, because he would have wanted Blaine to.

        

***

         One afternoon, Santana sent Puck and Sam off on patrol and she called everyone else together. "I've had this for a while," she said, pulling a bottle of shampoo from the back of one of the vans. It was a bright orange bottle of Herbal Essences. It had a mango scent. It was the same shampoo Blaine had used before The Change. "And in light of recent events, I think we could all use some clean hair."

         Rachel grinned from ear to ear. "That's a brilliant idea."

         Even Blaine cracked a smile. The luxury of having clean hair was a long forgotten one. The girls oohed and ahhed as they inhaled the smell of the shampoo, eager to work it into their hair.

         They boiled water and washed each other's hair, waxing poetic about the heavenly feeling of clean hair, the way the warm water enveloped their scalps.

         A bizarre thought occurred to Blaine. Before The Change, he wouldn't have been friends with any of these girls. He would have stuck to his own group, ignored the others. But now, here, teetering on the edge of death, he had found some of the best friends he'd ever had. They supported each other and were honest with each other. He was letting them touch his _hair_.

         "It's nice to see you smile," Quinn said, toweling off Blaine's locks.

         "It's nice to smile," Blaine agreed.

         Puck and Sam came back and laughed at their hair and Santana washed Sam's hair and Quinn washed Puck's and he splashed her with water and she squealed in delight.

         For a moment, they were just kids. And it was the best day.  
  
Chapter Art:  
[](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/3544)  


  



	8. Nobody Will Ever Remember Me

[ ](http://powerbottoms.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/318/2145)

 

         Time passed, the seasons changed. A year went by. Two years. He never took off the bracelet. Some of them died. Rachel died of hypothermia after falling into a river. Sam was poisoned from eating strange berries. It hurt, but not as much as Kurt’s death did. Nothing hurt quite like that.

         On a Sunday (or at least, it felt like a Sunday. They didn't know the date anymore), Blaine was bit by a Walker while on patrol with Puck, but Brittany's antidote saved him.

         It felt strange to Blaine, that Brittany had the potential to save the planet, but did not try to. She was not complacent, just clueless. Quinn had mused over it once with Blaine on patrol.

         "She created an antidote and her mission ended there," Quinn reasoned. "I don't think she wanted to save anyone, I think she just wanted to prove to Santana that she could do it."

         "That's insane," Blaine said. "She could end this all right now."

         "What did it feel like?" Quinn asked suddenly. "When you were bit."

         Blaine sighed. "My body felt hot, like I had a fever. It felt like I was underwater. I could feel and see things around me, but I couldn't _connect?_ "

         Quinn nodded.

         "It was like when you're sleeping, and someone turns on the light and you just think _turn off the light_. I wanted the light to turn out."

         "Did you want to live?" Quinn asked.

         Blaine looked up at the sun through the trees. "I don't remember," he answered honestly. He looked down at his forearm and traced the half-moon shaped scar there. "I was so lucky. I can't believe it, I guess."

         Quinn smiled. "Some people are too interesting to die."

         Once in a while, Puck would pick a car and hot wire it to fiddle with the radio. As always, Quinn would silently sit shotgun, watching him work.

         Her infection had worsened until they were positive her blood was poisoned. She had a fever, she threw up, and her clothes were soaked in blood and pus. Puck held her and he cried and cried. "You're so beautiful," he would whisper. One night, they were sure she would go. They lay her down in one of the vans, and said their goodbyes.

         Blaine had simply whispered, "Goodbye Thelma." Quinn had smiled.

         Blaine didn't want to listen in to Puck's goodbye, but he did. "Not today," Puck told Quinn.

         "Today," she told him.

         And then, like the deus ex machina in a contrived film, Brittany swooped in with drugs. "Where did you get those?" Santana sputtered.

         "I made them," Brittany said, like it was the most obvious answer. "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

         Quinn lived.

         They all lived.

         It was a sunny day in spring, the weather was warm and Puck was fiddling with the radio, Quinn silently at his side.

         He got a signal.

         "FUCKINGCHRIST!" He screamed. "THERE'S SOMEONE ON THE RADIO."

         Everyone dropped what they were doing and they ran to the car. " _The new border will stretch from the state formerly known as Alaska east to the Atlantic Ocean and southwards, stopping at the border of the country formerly known as Mexico,"_ the radio crackled. " _Now that Canada has annexed the United States, the country will be known as Bamitam. We will return in three hours with notes on curfew. Thank you."_

         They didn't turn off the radio for days. For the first time in years, they were able to hear what had happened to their country, to their planet. Because of the heath care system in the United States, it had quickly become the most infected country on the planet after China. Chemicals were released that exterminated the Walkers throughout the country. The country was annexed by Canada. There had indeed been Walker testing facilities that were going to become active again. Any citizens found without papers would be subject to questioning.

         "Papers?" Santana asked. "How are we supposed to get papers in the wilderness?"

         "What kind of government is this?" Quinn wondered.

         "Fuck," was all Puck said.

        

***

 

         They came about nine days later. They had guns; they were dressed in riot gear. Quinn, Blaine and Puck were playing cards with a deck they had found in the glove compartment of one of the vans. Brittany and Santana were talking quietly in another van. It was sunny; there was a light breeze. It would have been a good day.

         One of the officers fired a round of shots in the air. "COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!" Quinn went white. In all their time together, Blaine had never seen her as terrified as she was in that moment. Puck took her hand.

         "Not today," he told her.

         They stumbled out of the vans and stood before the officers. There were about ten of them. Blaine felt like a child. One of the officers stepped forward.

         "My name is Sergeant Romero," he said. "You will surrender your belongings and come with us."

         "Hold up, Captain Kangaroo," Santana snarled. "We're not bothering anyone, we're just living. If you want to come around and fire your guns off that's fine, but you can take your flabby policeman ass somewhere else, we're not going _anywhere_."

         A red dot appeared on Santana's forehead. It did not quiver; it was steady as a rock.

         "Don't test me," the Sergeant snarled back. "You little fuckers are living here without papers, and the testing facility has been broken into. You're coming with me."

         "If I give you my antidote, will you leave us alone?" Brittany asked softly.

         " _What_?" Romero asked.

         "Brittany, _no_ ," Santana whispered, tears starting to trail down her face.

         "Prove it," Romero stated.

         Blaine pulled up his sleeve and showed Romero his bite mark. "Does that look like a dog bite to you?" he asked, impressed with his courage. His voice was steady, but his legs were shaking.

         "I still want to test it," the Sergeant said coolly. "Sampson, get the Walker from the truck."

         One of the officers ran out of the clearing.

         Blaine stole a glance at Quinn, who was white as a sheet.

         "What…you're just going to…throw us to a Walker?" Quinn asked him.

         "If it works, you have nothing to worry about blondie," Romero spat. "As far as this government's concerned, without papers, you little fuckers don't exist."

         Quinn turned and threw up. Puck rubbed her back murmuring, "You're fine, you're fine," over and over.

         "Who is he? Your boyfriend?" Romero asked. "Maybe we'll test him."

         Quinn threw up again.

         Officer Sampson had arrived in the clearing again, wheeling up a cage with a Walker in it. It was a new Walker, strong, going mad with the scent of so much living prey.

         "Bring him over," Romero ordered, pointing at Puck.

         Two officers grabbed him and pulled him over to the cage. "I _love_ you," Puck said. He was only looking at Quinn. "I love you I love you I loveyouIloveyouIloveyou…" The officers took his arm and jammed it in the Walker cage. Quinn brought her hands up to her mouth, tears streaming down her face. Blaine wanted to touch her, help her, but he felt like he was in a nightmare. He wanted to wake up. He pinched himself so hard he was sure there were going to be bruises.

         The Walker moaned, grabbed Puck's arm, and bit down. He didn't scream; he just looked at Quinn.

         "Get the antidote," Romero ordered Brittany. She returned seconds later with a needle full of the antidote. "Shame you'll probably lose that arm," Romero told Puck, gesturing Brittany to administer the antidote.

        Brittany looked at Puck sadly as she administered the antidote. When she was done, she gently kissed his cheek. He was drenched in sweat.

         "It will take about half an hour," Brittany said.

         "We'll wait," Romero said.

         They waited.

         Quinn tried to run to Puck, but a red dot appeared on her forehead as well.

         Puck lived.

         The red dots stayed, but Quinn ran to him anyway.

         Blaine had never seen them hold each other so tightly. Puck whispered something in her ear, desperate, it looked like instructions. She shook her head, he whispered harder and faster. An officer pulled them apart.

         "I _love_ you," he said.

         Another officer kicked him in the ribs. "That's enough of that shit," the officer said. 

         "Alright," Romero said. "We're going to take Mr. Hero over here, the scientist and the _immigrant_ ," he glanced at Santana. "And we're going to load them in a truck. Five officers will stay here to monitor blondie and dog bite."

         The officers grabbed Puck, Santana and Brittany and escorted them out of the clearing. Five officers remained, pointing their guns at Quinn and Blaine.

         "Blaine," Quinn said so softly Blaine wasn't even sure he heard it. "The teal Honda has been hot wired, all we have to do is touch the ignition wires and we can drive away. I am going to count to three. You will drive. OK?"

         "OK," Blaine said.

         "One."

         Some of the officers shuffled, putting down their guns. There was commotion outside of the clearing. Puck was fighting back.

         "What about the others?" Blaine asked.

         "Puck said just go," Quinn said, her voice breaking. "Two."

         "I'm sorry," Blaine said.

         "We have to be thankful for what we had," Quinn said. "Three."

         They bolted for the teal Honda before the officers had time to react. Blaine touched the ignition wires and hit the gas as Quinn secured them with the electrical tape Puck kept in every car.

         "Where do I go?" Blaine asked frantically as the car whipped through the forest.

         "I don't know," Quinn said, her voice thin. "Just _drive_."

         They got out of the forest after about five minutes of driving and they hit a dirt road, Blaine floored the gas pedal. They could hear a helicopter above, vans behind them. Someone fired a gun.

         " _Shit!"_ Quinn cried, crouching down.

         Blaine turned off the road and drove through the flat grass around the highway. They wouldn't get caught. They couldn't. There had to be a way out of here. The flat plain ended. They found themselves approaching the edge of a cliff. Blaine hit the brakes, the car jerking to a stop.   

         "We're going to get caught," Blaine said breathlessly.

         Quinn laughed. "I can't believe this. Do you see?"

         Blaine stared over the steering wheel at the edge of the cliff. "Quinn," he breathed.

         "Let's not get caught," Quinn said, her voice breaking.

         "What are you talking about?" Blaine asked, even though he knew exactly what Quinn was talking about.

         "Let's keep going," Quinn said, turning to look at the edge of the cliff.

         "What do you mean?" Blaine's voice was thick with tears.

         "Go."

         "You sure?"

         "Yeah. Hit it." Quinn turned and smiled.

         They laughed, adrenaline coursing through their veins. They could end it on their terms. They had survived the virus, but they wouldn't survive the future. Blaine leaned over and kissed her on the mouth chastely, tasting her sweat and tears.

         Blaine hit the gas. They clasped hands. He heard gunshots from the helicopter above. It didn't matter.

         He was a hunter.

         He was not their prey.

         The car approached the edge of the cliff and he did not want to back away, did not want to stop.

         Quinn was breathing fast; clutching Blaine's hand so tightly he couldn't feel it anymore.

            And then they flew.

 

        

        

        

           

  



	9. Epilogue

The world ends but it keeps turning. The planet spins, the things living on it are not human. The government crumbles again and again, but it is rebuilt.

A boy and a girl drive off a cliff and they are forgotten, except by those who loved them.

One night in a holding cell, a boy with no arm slides a gun in his mouth, whispering “Today” and he pulls the trigger. It makes a mess, but someone is there to clean it up. 

A boy who died in a tragedy stays in the ground and becomes part of the earth.

A girl that everyone underestimated makes a genius discovery and saves the entire planet. She does not win a Nobel Prize; instead she asks if she and her best friend can go back to the forest.

The government is reluctant, but they agree to let her go.

They are standing in the woods now, holding hands, their empty vans still there. “I miss Sam,” one of them says. The other tucks her blonde hair behind her ear.

“I miss all of them.”

They live in the woods, they live together. They make love. They touch each other and it makes them feel whole. Sometimes they are naked under the moon, palming each other, whispering each other’s names.

She is not sure if she is gay, but she likes the way Santana makes her feel. When she is with Santana she does not feel alone. When they make love it reminds her of the days before the government came, before they locked her in a lab, before Santana spent so much time in the holding cell that it damaged her brain.

Loud noises make her flinch. She is terrified of cutting her hair; it grows black and wild all around her. If they do not eat, Santana feels like she is going to have a nervous breakdown. They are sure they are under surveillance but they do not care.

Homosexuality is not illegal, but it is discouraged. It does not create life, it stops it. The thing is, she never feels more alive than when she is with Santana. She never feels more okay.

Sometimes she will go back to her old lab (the bed of a Jeep) and fiddle with chemicals, but she feels dead. She cannot work any more. It is ruined for her. She couldn’t save Blaine or Quinn. They left her. Everyone has left her. She feels dirty most days, she feels like by saving the world she has destroyed it. Santana tries to help her but they both feel helpless. They hold each other at night and they try and try to feel like they did before, but feeling has become difficult.

The idea comes to Santana one day very simply. It’s as though someone has gently dropped the idea in her head. They can end it all; they can make it over, the suffering, and the disparity. They hold each other and they do not cry. They eat the cyanide and they lie together in a van, naked. It feels like the ending to some tragic WWII novel, but they free themselves of the concrete, they are free floating in the air and soaring through galaxies.

***

They are going over the cliff and the sun is shining and their hands are clasped together. He can feel, taste, touch the end, and he welcomes it. He looks up in the sky and he sees exploding supernovas. He lets go of Quinn’s hand and he reaches to touch. He finds another hand, the hand of the boy he loves.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’ve been looking for you forever.”

He is out of the car above the ground and he feels like he is flying and he is in Kurt’s arms and he feels completely happy.

“You are the love of my life.”

They are together.


End file.
